


The Buried Life

by orphan_account



Series: The Buried Life [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Use, Episode: s03e01 The Empty Hearse, Episode: s03e02 The Sign of Three, F/M, Infidelity, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Porn With Plot, Porn with Feelings, Sexual Inexperience, Sherlock Series 3 Spoilers, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-07 08:06:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 29,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1117514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You thought he’d be amazed by your cleverness, didn’t you? Faking your death, two years on the run. You thought about how proud he’s be. How impressed.” She moved closer, almost toe to toe. “That’s what kept you going. Showing off for John.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My first fic in the Sherlock fandom...and Marylock happened. Porn with lots of feelings all around.
> 
> SPOILERS FOR SERIES THREE!
> 
> Un-beta'd and Un-Britpicked. If anyone is interested, please let me know!
> 
> UPDATE: You can reach me by email at CaitlinFairchild1976@gmail.com. Still in need of betas and Britpickers if anyone is willing to help!
    
    
    Alas! is even love too weak 
    To unlock the heart, and let it speak? 
    Are even lovers powerless to reveal 
    To one another what indeed they feel? 
    I knew the mass of men conceal'd 
    Their thoughts, for fear that if reveal'd 
    They would by other men be met 
    With blank indifference, or with blame reprov'd; 
    I knew they liv'd and mov'd 
    Trick'd in disguises, alien to the rest 
    Of men, and alien to themselves—and yet 
    The same heart beats in every human breast. 
                                           -Mathhew Arnold 

As it turned out, stepping back into the deerstalker was an exhausting business.

Returning Sherlock Holmes to the embrace of London took the entire afternoon and beyond, stretching well into the evening. After the initial press announcement came the questions. Then the photographs. Then the one-on-one interviews with _The Times_ and _The Guardian_. At some point, takeaway boxes materialized in the kitchen. Sherlock attacked them voraciously, much to John’s surprise.

“Coming back from the dead is hungry work, John,” he said around a mouthful of egg roll, and Mary saw the irritation and hurt flare in John’s face at the tactless joke. His annoyance faded quickly, however--more quickly than the day before, and Mary began to feel optimistic about the future of the two men’s odd relationship.

(She had come to realize that Sherlock being irritating was much like the sky being blue or water being wet; it just was, and railing against it was a colossal waste of one’s time and energy. Sherlock simply was what he was, and trailing in his wake or getting out of his way were really the only options at hand. She found, somehow, that she didn’t really mind.)

At seven thirty, Mrs. Hudson’s hip began to ache and she bade them a fond goodnight. Eight o’clock arrived, and Molly and her scarf-wearing fiance made their timely exit, with Sherlock positively vibrating with the effort of not rolling his eyes at Molly’s suspiciously familiar-looking beau and John throwing the detective his patented Captain Watson “Don’t You Fucking Dare” dagger eyes.

As the group thinned out and the evening wound down, Sherlock, John, Mary and Lestrade remained, making the most of Sherlock’s rare sociable mood. Stuffed with Chinese and finishing off the last of the really excellent champagne, the man John had often described as distant and cold was neither, clearly relishing an appreciative audience as he explained the intricacies of the foiled Underground plot. 

“Simple, really,” he said dismissively, though his eyes were smiling. “Obvious. Clumsy.”

When Sherlock finally tired a bit of showing off, Lestrade brought him up to date in on the criminal happenings of the past two years, with John occasionally joining in and Mary watching the men with interest. John was visibly relaxing, settling in to the reality of Sherlock being present and alive and real, and Mary found she truly enjoyed just being in their presence. 

_I ought to be jealous_ , she mused. Sherlock brought out a side of John that Mary had not seen in their six months of dating; something fierce and protective and frustrated and utterly alive glowed from within when Sherlock was by his side. Occasionally, he remembered that he was still angry, and harrumphed or made a cutting remark, but it was mostly for show, to pretend like he hadn’t yet fully let go of his righteous indignation. 

Under the warm spell of food and alcohol and the presence of his best friend, John looked younger and happier and freer than Mary would have believed possible just a day earlier.

***

Lestrade said goodbye sometime past eleven. Mary found herself growing increasingly sleepy, but John showed no inclination to leave. Sherlock’s violin appeared, clearly kept in top shape in his absence (by his brother, perhaps? John had tried to explain Mycroft Holmes, but Mary had a hard time conceptualizing the existence of a another Holmes out there.) Sherlock rosined the bow and tried a few notes. He grimaced and examined his fingers.

“You sound fine, Sherlock,” John reassured him.

“Two years out of practice. My calluses are almost gone.” He picked out a few more notes, looking dejected.

“You sound _fine_ ,” John repeated, “Your playing is always gorgeous and you know it. Keep it simple, us peasants won’t even know the difference, will we, love?”

Mary didn’t miss the spark of warmth in Sherlock’s pale eyes at John’s words of approval. She smiled as Sherlock sighed in mock irritation and settled the violin under his chin, closing his eyes as he set bow to string. The instrument sparked to life under his fingers, a low, soothing melody that sounded just a bit plaintive and yearning to Mary’s ears. She closed her eyes and let the music and the warm moment carry her thoughts.

 _I like him_ , she had said to John. And it was true. She knew she should be angry at what this dark-haired force of nature had put her fiance (well, almost-fiance) through. But she saw, clearly, what drew John to Sherlock. She saw the energy that coursed through him, the life that flowed through his veins, the brilliance and the chaos that followed in his wake. It should frighten her, shouldn’t it? Kidnappings and bomb plots and breakneck motorbike dashes through London. 

It didn’t.

She understood. She understood why John was drawn do this lovely, eccentric and dangerous man. She and John had only been together for six months, but she knew him instinctively, in ways she could not explain in mere words. She saw how what was frightening and disorienting to lesser, more timid souls spoke right to the heart of John Watson.

She saw it because she and John were alike in many ways, and it spoke to her too.

“That’s so lovely. It doesn’t sound at all simple, does it?” she murmured drowsily to John.

“Nothing is simple with that one,” John said, settling his arm around her.

 _Nothing here is_ , was Mary’s last coherent thought as she drifted easily toward sleep.

***

She woke to low-pitched but heated conversation.

“Look, Sherlock, I couldn’t possibly--we couldn’t possibly--”

“Be reasonable, John. You’ll never get a cab at this hour, and there are still reporters camped out on the--”

Sherlock, I...Jesus. We’re back on speaking terms for forty-eight hours and you’re expecting me to sleep here?”

“Don’t be irrational. Mary is already asleep--”

She grunted and flapped her hand in Sherlock’s general direction.

“Yes, you are, or you will be again in a moment. Mrs. Hudson put fresh sheets on the bed upstairs. Just take it and go home in the morning.”

“Of course she did, ” John grumbled the tone of annoyed resignation that meant he was going to give in eventually but was not yet ready to let the matter drop.

“John. Sweetheart. Let’s just stay.” Half asleep, Mary felt like getting up and going out into the chill November night was an absolute impossibility.

John exhaled through his teeth. “Okay. Fine. I guess I don’t want to slog across town at this hour.” He gently nudged Mary off his shoulder and stood, extending his hand to help her up. “I expect as our host you’ll be making tea in the morning.”

“Of course,” Sherlock murmured, dryly sarcastic. 

Mary turned her head as John was leading her out of the sitting room. “Thank you, Sherlock. Goodnight.”

The only response from Sherlock was the unreadable expression that crossed his face as the couple made their way to the steps.

***

In the darkened bedroom John reached for her, and she shook off her tiredness and responded hungrily. She understood his need, shared it, saw instinctively how he wanted to reclaim this space, make this room theirs in the here and now instead of a relic of those terrible, numb, dead times.

The double bed shifted and creaked as he settled his weight between her thighs and slid into her, fitting inside her in a way that took her breath away. She could taste the new life in him, the adrenaline of the chase still on his skin, and it thrilled her in a way she could not put a name to.

As the creaking springs began their crescendo and she trembled on the edge of climax, she thought fleetingly about Sherlock listening to their lovemaking, to their murmurs and sighs, and she realized that she had did have a name for it, after all.

***

Mary woke sometime in the dead of night, thirsty, furry tongued and desperately needing a piss. In the lamplight from the window she could see the outline of John’s back as he slept soundly, exhausted from the events of the past few days, 

_You need this_ , she thought, smoothing a hand over his soft hair. _You need him_. She knew it was true, though what Sherlock’s return meant to her life with John, she couldn’t yet see.

But she loved him, truly she did, and vowed to herself that she would never knowingly interfere in this connection. Just as a surely as Sherlock had come back from the dead, so had John, and she would never take that away from him. 

From them.

She decided not to wake John, instead grabbing his discarded button down and shrugging into it. Rummaging as quietly as she could in the boxes by the window, she found a pair of old plaid boxers, clearly meant for the rag bin. She left the bedroom, easing the door shut and crossing the hallway to the bathroom where she first used the toilet, then dug through the medicine cabinet to find a toothbrush and an elderly, slightly crusty, mostly-empty tube of toothpaste. The long-unused taps gurgled and chugged before pouring forth sluggish, rust-colored water.

Brushing her teeth was non-negotiable, however, so Mary shut the taps and ventured downstairs. A light still glowed at the kitchen table, and Sherlock was nowhere in sight. Mary tried to be quiet as she dug through the cupboards, finally locating a teacup that seemed relatively clean. She had the tap running and a mouthful of toothpaste bubbles when the deep baritone made her almost jump.

“John initiated sex. You agreed because you knew he was anxious about sleeping here. You reached orgasm once while you were on top, then then again in missionary position.”

How very Sherlock, Mary thought, as she filled the teacup and carefully spit, then rinsed. Wait until an awkward moment to pounce, to knock the subject off-balance. She deliberately drew another cupful of water and drank it down before she turned to him. He was leaning against the kitchen doorway, the very picture of studied nonchalance in his red silk dressing gown.

“It wasn’t missionary. It was hands and knees. If you must know.”

The merest shadow crossed his face, a flicker of something hot and dangerous, and then it was gone so quickly Mary wondered if she really saw it at all. Sherlock studied her closely, seeking the truth of her words. Seeing it there, he shrugged, miming an ease Mary knew he didn’t feel. “There’s always something.”

She set the teacup behind her on the cluttered countertop. “Do you always discuss John’s sex life--which is horrendously inappropriate, by the way, so ta very much for that-- with his girlfriends?”

“Of course not.”

“Why not?”

“They were all boring...before.”

“I’m not boring?”

Sherlock’s face was unreadable. He nodded, just slightly, as if she had passed some kind of test. 

A test of what? wondered Mary. Of her loyalty to John, perhaps? Perhaps he was trying to test her with his tactless statements, see how she’d react, how she could defend herself

Sherlock’s gaze was unblinking, and she held it with just a trace of defiance. A trace of a smile crossed his lips, and Mary, who may not always be clever but she understood a lot more than most, saw the shadows hiding there.

“No, Miss Morstan,” he breathed softly, “you are not...at all...boring.”

Who was this man, she wondered? Sherlock had seemed off-kilter since they had met, not at all the distant and emotionless robot machine that John had described to her. He seemed a bit manic, like his parts didn’t fit together quite right anymore, and Mary wondered what lay under the surface, what kind of damage from those two years was carefully boxed up and hidden from view…

(Or he was shamming. That was always a possibility, of course. John had warned her thoroughly about that, and she would be wise not to discount the possibility. )

Mary was no consulting detective, but neither was she born yesterday, and her years as a nurse had made her a skilled enough observer in her own right. She plainly saw that Sherlock’s eyes were roving over her body, his eyes dilated, his pupils blown dark with arousal, and Mary knew then for certain that he had been listening to them earlier. Listening, and imagining them as their bodies entwined and moved together…

She suddenly realised that she was dressed entirely in John’s clothes, suffused with the scent of him and of the sex that still clung to her body.

Sherlock, two years away from home, away from John, so starved for attention and affection and love, listening to them, imagining their bodies merging, John moving inside of her, her cries as he made her come again and again...

The revelation was instantaneous, so huge that Mary almost gasped aloud.

Oh. _Oh._

Poleaxed, Mary realised belatedly that they were now frankly staring at each other. She noticed how his breathing was quickened, his chest rising and falling under his thin T- shirt, his eyes pinned on her like he was a lion and she was prey.

But the great Sherlock Holmes had miscalculated. Again.

Mary Morstan was many things to many people, but Sherlock needed to understand she was nobody’s goddamn gazelle.

She took a deep breath (could she smell the arousal coming off him in waves? Was it making her shaky and fueling that hot terrible itch inside? Jesus, what was wrong with her?) and summoned her courage.

“Why didn’t you ever tell him?”

His eyes snapped up to meet hers. “That’s ridiculous.”

Mary raised her eyebrows and said nothing.

“You hardly have the data necessary to come to such a conclusion.”

“I think I do.” Mary set the cup down and crossed the small kitchen to where the detective stood, holding his gaze despite the ten-inch height difference. “You show off for him. You crave his approval.” Sudden understanding flowed through her. “You thought he’d be amazed by your cleverness, didn’t you? Faking your death, two years on the run. You thought about how proud he’s be. How impressed.” She moved closer, almost toe to toe. “That’s what kept you going. Showing off for John.” 

Her voice softened in sympathy for this strange difficult man. “That’s the only way you know how to show how much you need him. By being clever. But he wasn’t impressed, was he? He was angry. So angry. You never even realized how badly you hurt him. Oh, Sherlock.”

Sherlock exhaled, turning his head. “I can’t--he doesn’t--Mary, he’s _not_.”

“He shaved for you, you foolish man. Doesn't that say something?"

 _Whose side are you on here, woman?_ Mary wondered to herself. _Are there sides anymore? There's just the truth, and so many things can be true at once..._

Long hands scrubbed through carefully-coiffed dark curls in barely-concealed agitation. “I have calculated every possible outcome.” Sherlock stared at the floor as he spoke, unable or unwilling to meet Mary’s eyes. “There was a seventy-plus percent chance of such a revelation ending our relationship before I...went away. Now? I can’t possibly take the risk.” He sighed and shook his head, a wayward dark curl falling into across his forehead as he looked up at her, face so improbably young and eyes so impossibly old. "I just. I can't."

 _I think you’d be very surprised,_ she thought fleetingly, awash with sadness and longing as as she found herself reaching up to brush the curl from his eyes.

Sherlock caught her wrist, gently oh so gently pulling her closer, and turned and backed her gently into the doorway. Mary could feel the lightning shift within him as he changed, into to something dark and dangerous and just barely controlled. There was something wrong with him. There were so many things wrong with him.

And she was still here. What did that say about her?

“You smell like him,” Sherlock murmured, almost a growl, the baritone depths of his voice lighting sparks in her spine. His long body pressed into her smaller frame, his icy eyes burning into her.

Mary had dishonesty in her, to be sure, but she was not a woman to cheat on her boyfriend, and this was taking a turn for the _insane_ , no matter how intense and gorgeous and electric and desperately aching the pale, lean man in front of her might be. She opened her mouth to speak, to say the words that would break this strange spell. _Stop. This is wrong. You’re not well. I’m your best friend’s fiancee, for the love of--_

She couldn’t force the words out. This was Sherlock Holmes’ world once more, she realized, and none of the usual rules applied here.

His head bent to her neck and he tasted her there, tongue tasting the dried sweat from just hours earlier. She closed her eyes and bit back a moan.

“You taste like him,” he breathed.

His large, warm hands came up under the shirt she wore--John’s shirt--and his thumbs found her nipples, sending seismic waves of desire throughout her body.

Oh Jesus.

“I thought you didn’t--” _Do this with women? Do this at all?_ The permutations of the question died in her throat as those beautiful lips did something particularly exquisite and she groaned softly.

“Sometimes. I do. In certain circumstances.” 

“Is this some kind of...test? What kind of woman I am? My loyalty to John? Because--"

“No,” Sherlock growled, “No test.” His hands slid down her back, cupped her arse. "I just--I need. Please, Mary." He pulled her close, tongue and fingers doing unbelievable things and Mary could feel his insistent hardness against her belly. Sherlock only wanted her as proxy, she knew that-- only wanted to use her to get closer to John, and the very twistedness of that thought made something in her---in the terrible, wrong, bad part of her soul--crack open completely with want. He ground his hips against her, hard, and she made a mewling, needy noise in the back of her throat.

“I heard everything. I heard him fucking you,” he whispered as he pulled her body even tighter against him, “I imagined what it must feel like, to have him inside of you. Does it feel good, Mary?”

_No. Stop._

“Yes,” she gasped. 

“Let me touch you,” he whispered. “Let me touch you there, where he was inside of you.”

She didn’t know if it was a request or a command. It didn’t matter. He slipped his hand into the waistband of her--no, John’s---shorts, in between her thighs, and she spread her legs further apart for him as he found her clit, stroking it roughly yet expertly, her hips bucking towards him helplessly, seeking out more friction and heat and---ohh, yes. He slid two long, slender fingers up inside of her, where she was sore and abraded and still slippery wet with John’s come. The very wrongness of it all, the filthiness of his need, sent waves of electric bliss through her, building impossibly tight in the base of her spine, sending her ever closer to the edge of that yawning chasm.

Mary pressed her face into the red silk covering Sherlock’s chest to smother her animal noises at the feel of his long fingers twisting, stretching her, the palm of his hand pressed into her clit (and oh my god where did he learn to do that) as her she ground mindlessly against his fingers, starbursts of pleasure behind her eyes.

Sherlock’s lips moved up her neck and captured her mouth in a crashing, burning kiss, his tongue dipping inside, and Mary knew that he was seeking out every molecule of John in her mouth, tasting John inside her, and the idea of being the conduit between them, the incandescent connection between the two men made flesh and bone and body, giving and taking from each in turn--the thought of both of them with each other and also with her--she turned her head and bit into the flesh of Sherlock's arm to stifle a cry as he sent her crashing into her orgasm, the white hot pleasure blinding her, coursing through her body, leaving her shaky and gasping. He guided her expertly through the sparking, shivering aftershocks until she sagged against him, boneless and panting. 

His fingers stilled and withdrew, and Mary heard the rustle of fabric as he slid his wet hand into his pyjama bottoms and slicked his cock with John’s come and her juices, a soft exhalation of pleasure from his lips as he stroked himself hard.

“Tell me,” he whispered brokenly, and she did. She told him how John felt inside of her, how he liked to fuck her rough from behind, grabbing her hard enough to leave bruises as he whispered filthy endearments, you’re so beautiful so perfect so hot inside you feel so good god I love to fuck you like this--

“Please. Please, John,” he gasped into her hair as he came, shaking.

***

For several long moments neither spoke. Mary was the first to break contact, drawing away from Sherlock slightly.

“This,” she said, willing her voice to stop trembling as she gestured to the space between their bodies. “This is not a workable solution, long-term.” 

Sherlock drew his dressing gown around him tightly. “I know.” His face, still sheened with sweat, was transforming before her eyes into the impenetrable alabaster mask she was already coming to know all too well as he turned away from her.

“I am not myself, lately,” he murmured, not meeting her eyes. “It will pass, and everything will go back to…” Sherlock uncharacteristically struggled for words, took a breath, straightened. 

“It will pass.”

“Sherlock,” she said, placing a hand on his arm. He looked at her. A flicker of--shame? guilt?--appeared in his pale eyes and was gone just as quickly, carefully tucked behind a cool, passionless gaze.

“Sherlock, I--”

_I can do this. I can’t do this. I won’t hurt him. I’ve already hurt him._

 _I can be your surrogate, if that’s what you need. I can give him to you._

_I won't make him choose. Can you say the same?_

She reached for the only absolute truth she knew.

“I love him, too.”

His gaze softened just the barest fraction, and she saw his unspoken thought plainly. _We wouldn't be here if you didn't._

“Good night, Mary.”

And he was gone, in a swirl of long limbs and smooth silk.

Suddenly exhausted beyond measure, her legs refusing to support her weight, Mary slid down to the kitchen floor, back against the cabinet, and sat there staring sightlessly until dawn lightened the windows. Then she took herself upstairs, ran the taps until the water ran hot and clear, and took a shower with the last of John’s old shampoo. After, she slipped into bed and a still sleeping John curled his body around her as she laid awake, still and watchful as the grave.

***

The next morning, much to John’s surprise, Sherlock made tea.

The next evening, John asked Mary properly, and she accepted.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mary pictured them in her mind’s eye, shoulder to shoulder, so different and yet so perfect together, one long and lean and erratically brilliant and one small and compact and coolly competent, striding the darkened London streets as one. _My two lovely men_ , she thought to herself, and smiled.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Turns out there's more to this story. 
> 
> So much more.
> 
> Sherlock and John are back on the streets of London, Sherlock's in love with John, Mary's in love with John...basically everyone's in love with John. But there are currents between Sherlock and Mary as well, and Mary remembers what being with Sherlock felt like, and she wonders if they can somehow find a way for everyone to get what they need...
> 
> This was basically brain-barfed in about three hours. Any (all) mistakes are my own.

A few desultory snowflakes swirled past the window as Mary sipped her tea.

Mrs. Hudson had asked (bullied, really, in her charming motherly steamroller fashion) John and Mary to “drop in” on Sherlock expressly for the sake of arm-twisting the detective into a redux of the Baker Street Christmas party.

Although Sherlock plainly knew about their unannounced visit, he hadn’t managed to get dressed. At 4 pm. John ended up making the tea. Of course there was no milk.

But Sherlock seemed in a good enough humor. John had told her that Sherlock loved the holidays, which seemed to mean a grumpy acceptance instead of the vicious disdain the man showed towards anything he truly disliked.

Mary herself hadn’t made much of a fuss over the holiday in recent years. She’d had no reason to, she told Sherlock.

“Of course,” he’d replied, "one would rather have skipped Christmas, considering the circumstances. Late thirties, childless, unmarried…”

“Sherlock,” John intoned warningly.

“..completely alone, friends all smugly coupled up, looks fading, no suitors on the horizon…”

_"Sherlock."_

“No, darling, he’s right,” said Mary. “He’s a dick, of course, but he’s right. No reason for a spinster to make a fuss over Christmas, and gladly, those days are behind me now. Though, I’m sorry, Sherlock, were you talking about me or yourself?”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes at her but said nothing. _Point conceded_ , said his glare. She answered with her sunniest smile.

“So, eight p.m. on the twenty-third suits you, then?” Mary asked, clapping her hands together.

John sat back with a delighted grin, clearly impressed at Mary’s ability to get the upper hand with Sherlock.

Sherlock fiddled with his cuffs and scowled at the floor, which passed in his language for assent.

“I’m not tidying,” he grumbled.

“No worries,” answered Mary gaily. “We’ll just string your various cadaver bits up with fairy lights and call it festive.”

“We may want to bring paper goods,” John added. “Have you seen the kitchen lately? Don’t want to poison our friends on Christmas.”

“Though, you have to admit, a mass poisoning would be just the thing for a Holmes holiday gathering,” Mary noted. 

“That’s true,” John agreed jovially. “We could call it the Case of the Coliform Christmas.”

“Or Hepatitis for the Holidays,” offered Mary.

“ _Do_ shut up, both of you,” snapped Sherlock wearily.

***

Sherlock obviously had nothing in for tea, so they picked up a pizza on the way home. The couple arranged themselves on the couch, pizza on the coffee table in front of them. _Domestic life suits you, Mary, you’ve gained seven pounds,_ said the honeyed baritone whisper in her head. Mary deliberately took a big, cheesy bite-- _fuck off, you gangly toff_ \--and flicked on the telly. She pulled up Netflix and picked her favorite Christmas movie.

“This is a Christmas chick flick, isn’t it?” John groaned good-naturedly as he bit into his slice.

“Shut up, you. You like chick flicks.”

“The last one? I like Julianne Moore.”

“Oh really?”

“Yep. Next fiancee’s gonna be a redhead.”

“Wanker.” Mary mock-glared and John grinned.“You also liked _The Notebook_.”

“Okay, maybe I have a thing for Ryan Gosling.”

Mary arched an eyebrow at him.

“Doctor John Watson, that’s the gayest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

He shrugged. “Just because I don’t care for the cuisine doesn’t mean I can’t look at the menu.”

Mary closed her hanging jaw carefully, lest unchewed pizza fall out. After the briefest of contemplation, she decided the best course would be to not make a big deal about John Watson’s miniscule deviation from heteronormativity. She pressed play on the remote, then set it down on the table and picked up her glass of wine.

“I think you’ll like it. The one bloke reminds me a lot of you.”

“Colin Firth? Yeah, I agree.”

She kicked him with a stockinged heel, laughing.

***

John’s phone vibrated two-thirds of the way through the movie. He frowned, tapped out a response, and put it back in his pocket. A few moments later it buzzed again and he ignored it, but Mary could feel him subtly tensing with a checked energy. Just as she opened her mouth to say something, her text alert beeped from the depths of her handbag. She rose and crossed the sitting room to fish it out.

_Cardiologist. Human heart in box for Christmas gift. Still warm. Tell John I need a doctor.-SH_

“John.”

“No, I’ve told him, my time with you comes first.”

“John. He needs you. Go.”

He hesitated--bless him--and peered at her closely. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Sherlock needs you.” She made a shooing motion. “Go. Before his heart grows colder.”

John stood and kissed her. “You’re a poet, darling.” He quickly shrugged into his coat and gloves, slid his wallet into his pocket. “Love you.”

“Love you too. Have fun. Try to stay out of skips this time.”

“No promises.” He smiled at her--and Mary would never get enough of that smile, the Sherlock smile, the smile that promised danger and trouble and adrenaline--and he was out the door in a heartbeat.

Mary pictured them in her mind’s eye, shoulder to shoulder, so different and yet so perfect together, one long and lean and erratically brilliant and one small and compact and coolly competent, striding the darkened London streets as one. _My two lovely men_ , she thought to herself, and smiled.

Six weeks gone since his return, Sherlock seemed calmer, more collected, more able to put distance between himself and the rest of the world. He was...she supposed “better” was the word she was looking for, but Mary knew that for Sherlock “better” almost certainly didn’t include any kind of processing or reckoning of the unknown trauma he had likely experienced, but rather more a herculean effort to lock his more difficult feelings away, weight them down with iron and cast them away in the uncharted depths of his psyche.

She supposed that meant that she would never again have what she experienced with him the night after his re-introduction to London. And she knew, intellectually, that was for the best. The risk of damage was tremendous, and although she was not precisely sorry--what happened between them came from their love of John, not a desire to hurt him--the rusty edge of guilt still sawed at her conscience, reminding her that was a lovely justification that wouldn’t make a whit of difference to John’s feelings of utter betrayal if their actions ever came to light.

But. But. She was sad for Sherlock, for his unrequited feelings, for his loneliness, for every difficult feeling she knew still lurked under that cool, untouchable facade. And still found herself drawn to him. There was no denying that. And even if he was only attracted to her as a conduit to John--well, that could be enough, couldn’t it? 

She wanted both of them. Neither one lessened the other. They complemented each other in every way, and she knew---well, she hoped--that could be true in her bed as well.

 _Not bloody likely_. She sighed.

Oh, well. Done was done, past was past.

Even if it never happened again, even if she never figured out a way to break down the barriers and bring them all together, she would always think of Sherlock and the way he felt against her, inside her, and she would think of him as hers. Just a little.

 _Is that wrong_ , she wondered?

No, she decided, not a bit. It took nothing away from how she felt about her fiance. If anything, it added an additional layer of affection, of want, that lovely dark warm feeling tucked into a box in her heart marked “SherlockandJohn.”

Sinking back down into the cushions, Mary picked up her glass on wine, draining it off in one swallow. She resumed the movie, pulling the blanket around her legs to make up for the loss of John’s warmth. She was wrong about the bloke in the film, Mary decided. He might be good-looking enough, but hers? Hers were downright gorgeous.

***

Mary never minded the chasing after criminals; occasionally she even joined in to go undercover as a teacher or secretary or car rental clerk, once even stopping a fleeing small time arms dealer by smashing him over the head with a ceramic lamp.

(Sherlock smiled at her that night, the broad, genuine smile he seldom gave because it made his angelic alabaster face go all wide and goofy and oh how he _hated_ that, but Mary loved it so because it made him so real, so human...)

She dealt with the stains and smells and God-knows-what else that came home on John’s clothes; that one was solved neatly by giving John a segregated laundry basket and making him do his own washing. 

But the part where the one or both of the men inevitably returned at some ungodly hour and made a racket that would wake the dead? That was starting to piss her off.

The door slammed and woke Mary from a sound sleep at--oh God--three forty five a.m. She didn’t have work on a Saturday, but the surgery was shorthanded the week before Christmas and John had been guilt-tripped into taking a half shift. That was on him though, Mary had decided, as he was in fact a full grown man.

She grumbled to herself and was about to fall back asleep when something crashed in the kitchen. _Jesus, you would think they were drunk, the way they were bashing about down there_. Now fully awake and annoyed, Mary pulled on a dressing gown over her tank top and knickers and padded downstairs to the kitchen.

Her irritation was cut short by the sight of Sherlock sprawled heavily in a kitchen chair, bag of ice held to the back of his head, with an ugly gash behind his left ear that was still seeping blood and a rapidly blackening right eye. There was an unopened suture kit on the table, and John was scrubbing his hands under the kitchen tap.

“Jesus, Sherlock.” Mary’s years of nursing had given her the ability to keep concern out of her voice, not that the detective would be fooled. You look a sight.”

He glanced up at her, his eyes a bit glazed by pain but still dancing with delight. She could see the buzz of a successful case still simmering in his veins. “Mary, your John was amazing. He took down a man twice his size with a single blow to the solar plexus--”

“Because he had just bashed you with a nail studded two by four, you enormous bumbling git, and the next blow could have killed you.” John turned his head and looked at Mary. “Love, I’m so sorry about the noise, but I’m glad you’re here. Could you fetch me the desk lamp so I can sew this idiot’s head back together?”

(Mary had quickly learned that abusiveness of the language towards Sherlock directly correlated with John’s concern for his well-being. Going by John’s use of mild vulgarity but no outright swearing, she determined that Sherlock needed some medical attention but would live to see another day.)

She nodded and ducked into the front room, returning with the flexible desk lamp. She plugged it into the socket behind the wall, having to crouch down and wiggle behind Sherlock to do so. She unconsciously put her hand on Sherlock’s leg to maneuver herself back up. Suddenly remembering he was hurt, Mary looked up at him, “I’m sorry, Sherlock. I didn’t--”

“It’s fine.” Sherlock looked at her, adrenaline shining in his eyes. He held her gaze for just a beat longer than necessary, and Mary felt a sudden stab of heat.

She knew that look. She remembered what happened the last time she was on the receiving end of that look.

Then it was gone in a flash, turned off like a light, his eyes still bright and animated but the darker depths hidden from view. Mary pulled her gaze away from him and stood.

“What else do you need, darling?” she asked John.

“Can you disinfect the table and set up a sterile drape?”

Glad to have something to do, Mary found a sealed packet of gloves in John’s kit and set to work, setting out the sterile(ish) field and handing John instruments so he didn’t have to fumble for them, and she marveled at John’s lovely competent hands.

And found herself wondering if Sherlock was doing the same.

John tied and clipped the last suture and removed his gloves. Mary, a trained nurse to the bone, gathered the debris and searched for a grocery bag to carefully tie it up (medical waste, sharps, shouldn’t go in the bin but double bagging would have to do) as John fetched the mini torch on his keyring and shone the light in Sherlock’s eyes.

“I’m still a bit worried that you’re concussed,” he concluded. “You can kip on the sofa tonight. I don’t want you going home alone.”

“John,” Sherlock rumbled in exasperation, “I’m perfectly--”

“I’m not telling you as a friend, I’m telling you as your doctor. I didn’t take you to A&E, against my better judgment, but you’re not going anywhere tonight. Mary will make you a fry-up in the morning, won’t you, love.”

“I’m your nurse, not your housekeeper, so you can both piss right off,” she answered.

Sherlock laughed, then grunted in pain.

***

It was close to five before Mary begged off and went back to bed, leaving the pair in the living room dissecting the details of the case, something involving an organ-harvesting cardiologist, human cloning, and, somehow, money laundering in the Maldives. They were still deep in animated discussion, seeming nowhere near crashing, when Mary took herself upstairs and settled under the chilly covers.

She couldn’t get back to sleep. The energy was contagious, infectious, it bounced around the walls of the kitchen, around the whole house, settling in Mary’s bones, in her belly, pooling in between her legs.

It was always like this after a good night, this buzzing high that refused to settle. _How on earth have they never shagged like rabbits, feeling like this?_ she wondered for the hundredth time, tossing and turning as she waited, restless.

After a time the rumble of voices settled, and John’s footsteps, still springy with energy, came bounding up the steps. John entered the bedroom and closed the door firmly behind him with one hand, already working off a shoe with the other.

“You have to leave for work in an hour,” she said.

“I know,” he said, starting on the second one.

“I really hope,” said Mary, “that before you leave, you fuck me right through this mattress.”

“No rest for the wicked,” said John, hands already at the button of his jeans.

***

John Watson was so many different people. He was gentle, tender, kind of voice. Old ladies and children loved him.

He was also a soldier. Strong, steady. Courageous, especially when courage meant being afraid and doing what must be done in spite of it.

In bed he was confident, free, funny, unashamed. But also considerate, mindful of boundaries, loving.

But he was also, sometimes, this man. This man was rough, almost harsh. Demanding. Dominant.

Mary didn’t want this man all the time. But she loved when he came out to play.

John, glowing darkly with desire, pulled the coverlet off her and smiled.

“Strip,” he ordered, in the Captain Watson voice that brooked no dissent, and Mary complied eagerly, wiggling out of the thin tank top and knickers. He brushed them aside, onto the floor. John climbed onto the bed, straddled her, pinning her wrists over her head and covering her mouth in a merciless, demanding kiss. She whimpered and strained against him.

He pulled away and looked at her, considering. 

“I want to fuck your mouth,” he decided.

She nodded, and he released her wrists so she could slide down the bed. Knees on either side of her head, he took hold of himself, already rock hard, and touched just the tip of his cock against her lips. He grinned darkly.

“Open up, beautiful.”

She obeyed and he slid his cock in between her lips, groaning a little as the took him down deeply. She held herself still, reveling in the feel of her in his mouth and he held himself above her and thrust down, hard, almost gagging her on his length.

Most nights he would apologize, shallow his thrusts. Tonight he continued the punishing pace, one hand on the headboard, the other in her hair as he took his pleasure. Her jaw ached and her lips were wet with saliva but she held him, her hands on the back of his thighs as he fucked her mouth.

“You look so beautiful like this. Oh my god, your mouth. So helpless. So…” his breathing hitched as his hips stuttered; she could tell he was getting close. He wrapped his hand around the base of his cock and stilled, breathing hard. He pulled out of her mouth and moved back down her body, swiping the saliva off her chin with a gentle finger.

“Not yet. There’s so much more fun to have.” He kissed her again, tasting himself on her lips as he spread her legs apart. He paused, just at her entrance. She whimpered at the loss of contact.

“What do you want?”

“Please.”

“Please what?”

“Please fuck me.”

“Like this?” He pushed inside her, just a little, and waited.

“I want you to fuck me hard,” she panted. “Please, oh god, please.”

Satisfied, he slammed into her hard enough to make her see stars, her back arching with the pleasure and pain of it. He pushed her legs back, bending her almost double as he fucked her with animal abandon, over and over again in a steady relentless pace, until the sweat dripped off him even in the cool air and her legs shook with exertion. She dimly heard mewling crying noises from somewhere and realized vaguely she was the one making them.

The pressure in her was building, the heat growing in her, but she needed--

She reached her hand down to where their bodies were joined but he pushed it away.

“Maybe I shouldn’t let you come,” he rasped. “Maybe I should finish inside you and go to sleep, leave you aching for it. Maybe should I pull out and come on you. Maybe I should leave you up here, tied up, so when I go to work, you can’t finish yourself.”

The idea of that--used, abused, marked with his come, tied up, helpless, unsatiated, her hips bucking against nothing as she struggled...

And Sherlock downstairs. Knowing. Thinking about her like that. Oh God oh Jesus oh _fuck_ \---

“Please,” she gasped. “No, please, I need--”

“You need what, you filthy girl?”

“I need to come. Please let me come.”

He pulled out and with a quick economical move flipped her over onto her belly.

“Knees up.”

She pulled her knees up and he slammed into her again, no preamble, grabbing her hip with one hand and her hair with the other to guide his thrusts.

“You want it?” he growled. “Then take it, and say thank you.”

She reached down between her legs and found her clit, circling and rubbing and within a few moments she was cresting, breaking--

“Oh thank you, thank you oh god oh John oh--”

She came screaming his name, knowing Sherlock was listening, imagining--

And when John, mindless with pleasure, growled “Oh fuck, oh fuck, God, _yes_ ,” pulling her hair hard as he climaxed, she wished Sherlock was there to see and taste and feel them shatter apart.

Moments or minutes or days later John pulled out of her, collapsing onto the bed. Mary straightened her cramping legs out with a satisfied sigh. She turned on her side and looked at him, still a bit stunned.

John kissed her softly and grinned, then began to giggle. “Jesus, that was---”

“Loud?” she offered.

“I was gonna say enthusiastic, but loud is more honest.” He kissed her again. “I swear, if the legendary Sherlock Holmes doesn’t have a wank over that, he really is a machine.”

Mary regarded him with something like awe. John had thought about his best friend like that...and he hadn’t recoiled. He had grinned. A closed door in her mind opened a crack, and the light of possibilities poured through.

She touched his face reverently and smiled.

“What?” he asked her.

"You," she said. "Just...you."

***

The front door opened and closed at six forty-one. It took John nine minutes to reach the Tube station. When ten minutes had passed, Mary heard the pacing footsteps cross the small front room. One, two, three, four times.

Twelve steps up the stairs, pausing once in indecision. Nine steps to the bedroom door.

She closed her eyes and pretended to be asleep, knowing he wasn’t fooled but wanting to make it easier for him.

The rustle of sheets as he slid into bed behind her, bare chest against her back, Italian wool softness covering the insistent hardness of him, nestling into the curve of her arse.

His strong arm around her waist. She stroked his forearm gently.

“Sherlock--”

“I may be concussed,” he whispered into her hair. “I shouldn’t be left alone.”

Mary turned to him then, and kissed him with swollen sore lips. He licked his way down her body, taking in the salt and sweat and sex of her skin. She opened her legs for him and he tasted her there, where John had used her roughly, and he was so gentle on her aching abraded flesh, flicking his tongue against her, dipping inside of her, and she sighed as a second orgasm began to build, something sweet and tender that made her heart ache for all of them.

 _Somehow,_ she promised him silently, as her fingers combed gently through his soft, dark hair. _Somehow we can make this work. I don’t quite know how, but we’ll find a way. We’ll find a way for all of us._


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He had known better at one point, that was the funny thing. He had made himself immune to this kind of disgrace. Then he had met John, kindgoodbeautiful John. Then he had gone and died, left his John behind and found himself alone, and realized how truly lonely he was. Now he was caught in-between, unable to go back to being alone but not yet fit company for actual human beings.
> 
> Sherlock was an overgrown man-child entering an extremely delayed adolescence.
> 
> He was, other words, an idiot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, this one is angsty, guys. Sorry about that. I'm like Angsty Claus, giving angst to all the good little boys and girls. Things will get better, I promise.
> 
> My original intent was to write the whole story from Mary's point of view, but I realized that wouldn't tell the whole story. Also, Sherlock is a pushy bastard who always gets his way, and he really wanted his side of things told. I suspect John will have his say before too long, as well.
> 
> (I don't know how S3 canon will turn out--no spoilers, but I'm scared just like everyone else!--but at the moment of posting this is still canon-compliant.)

Spring was late in coming. The April afternoon was unseasonably wet and cold, which only pushed Sherlock into a fouler mood.

He scowled at the rain-streaked window. John was being a selfish, oblivious git. Again.

“Sheffield is boring.”

“Medical conferences are boring, Sherlock. That’s not the point. The point is I’m a doctor, and I have to do a certain amount of continuing education each--”

“Now you’re boring,” Sherlock heard the whinging note in his voice and winced internally, but seemed unable to stop. “Sheffield has made you boring, and you’re not even gone yet.”

“Three days. Friday, Saturday, I’ll be home Sunday evening. You won’t even notice I’m gone.”

“I never notice when you’re gone.”

“So this shouldn’t be a problem.”

“I never said it was a problem.”

“You can text me.”

“Why on earth would I text you in Sheffield?”

“If you get bored. I’ll be bored to tears.”

“Then don’t go.”

John sighed. “I’m not going through all this again, Sherlock.”

“What if a case comes up and I need you?”

“Seventy two hours. Make do. Call Molly. Call Mary, she loves to help on cases.”

“She won’t go into skips.”

She’s much smarter than either one of us, then.” John stood up, shrugged on his jacket.  
.  
Sherlock raised his head, tried to school his face into a more pleasant expression. “Stay for tea.”

“There’s tea?”

“I thought you could...make some.”

“Right, I’m off,” said John.

 

***

Sherlock had no intention of calling Mary. None whatsoever.

Not that he didn’t enjoy her company. He did indeed. There were a few things about her that didn’t quite add up, to be sure, and she was a bit manipulative at times, but Sherlock found he enjoyed the challenge of that sort of person. She was witty and kind and very nearly not-dull. And she made him, a man who never fit in anywhere, feel comfortable without being bored, and she had soft hands and lovely eyes and she _liked_ him. She _approved_ of him.

And she knew how he felt about John, and kept him close in spite of it. Maybe because of it? She let him share parts of what she had with John, which was the point where Sherlock’s tenuous understanding of the situation he found himself in failed completely.

And while Sherlock was an absolute master of deleting anything he didn’t feel like dealing with, but even he was unable to completely erase his awareness that there was a whole subsection of his relationship with Mary that went far, far beyond the realm of Not Good.

(Though the truth of it, the absolute heart of the matter was this: Sherlock's method of erasing things bore a great similarity to how the dictators of Third World banana republics erase political dissidents: by throwing the offenders in the deepest, darkest pit under the palace and pretending they never existed. But the bones are still, there, always, mouldering in the dark, aren’t they?)

Fortunately, there was always Work to keep Sherlock's racing mind occupied and his thoughts away from his ever more troublesome emotions. The criminals of London, however, seemed to be as dispirited by the dreary chill as Sherlock was, and there was nothing on, nothing in the papers, not even a creative dismembering or a small time jewelry heist....The private consulting, then. Sherlock opened his laptop to find his inbox full to overflowing with all sorts of cases, Mostly dreary domestic ones, to be sure, dealing with love in all its various tawdry forms: Love affairs gone wrong. Love triangles. Unrequited love.

Sherlock’s stomach did a funny flip, somewhat like hitting a pocket of turbulence in a two-seater plane, and he closed the laptop with a decisive thump. 

He had that experiment with the dessicated mice, after all. He poked at them with a pipette. They remained resolutely shriveled and dead.

He flopped dramatically on the couch. There was no one to see him, which diminished the effect somewhat.

Afternoon shadows lengthened into evening. Sherlock’s sulk, wasted on an empty room, softened into drowsiness. Exhausted by the effort it took to Not Think About Things, Sherlock gradually slid into a sound sleep.

***

_John’s hair is spun gold in the late afternoon sunlight streaming through the window._

_Sherlock reaches out with a shaking hand and strokes the gorgeous silky strands. John smiles, closes his eyes, and leans into the touch. Sherlock slides his hand around the back of his head, brings him close, and kisses him._

_John moans softly and opens his mouth to the kiss, and Sherlock devours him like a starving man at a Christmas dinner. He tastes of PG Tips and cinnamon gum and Mary, and Sherlock makes a tiny, whimpering noise in the back of his throat. He has waited so long for this, waited so long for him, thought about this on so many lonely nights…_

_John breaks the kiss and steps back, smiling. “God, you are gorgeous, “ he whispers, undoing the top button of Sherlock’s shirt. He bends his head, brushes his lips against Sherlock’s bared flesh as he unbuttons each one, tasting him, sliding his hands under the fabric to stroke his fingertips across heated skin._

_A pair of small soft hands come up behind him, sliding the shirt off his shoulders. “Beautiful.” Mary murmurs as her breath stirs the soft curls at the nape of Sherlock’s neck. “Perfect.” Her gentle lips are kissing his shoulders. “You’re so good.”_

_“I want to be,” Sherlock breathes. “ I want to be good, I want to be good enough for you--”_

_She turns his head and his mouth finds hers. Her kisses are so sweet, with a kindness he has never known or earned, and he feels his throat constrict with feelings he can’t even name._

_“I don’t deserve you,” he whispers._

_“You do,” she reassures him. “You do. You’re everything to us.”_

_John sinks to his knees as the last button is undone, and he pulls Sherlock’s shirt off his arms and tosses it to the floor. Sherlock breaks away from Mary’s kiss to take in the breathtaking sight of John Watson on the floor in front of him, looking up at him with infinite tenderness._

_“Everything,” he agrees, undoing the closure on Sherlock’s trousers._

_Sherlock gasps as John takes him in his mouth, surrounding him in soft wet heat as Mary slides her hands around his chest, thumbs rubbing in circles across the delicate flesh of his nipples. Sherlock runs his hands through John’s hair as John sucks him, swallows him down into the vortex of perfect friction, closing his eyes against the onslaught of pleasure, his spine tightening, the pressure in his balls growing. He’s not going to last much longer, he’s so close already--_

_“I love you,” he cries out as he comes, “I love you, don’t leave me, I love you.”_

***

Sherlock woke to a darkened flat, to a sticky mess he hadn’t dealt with since public school, and the hot prickle of unshed tears behind his eyes. 

As his breathing slowed, the self-recriminations were immediate. This was his own fault. He had embarked on this new path of emotional connection and had-- _typical!_ \--bungled the whole enterprise from the very start.

Sentiment. This is where sentiment led, to wet dreams and tears and all manner of damp humiliations. 

He had known better at one point, that was the funny thing. He had made himself immune to this kind of disgrace. Then he had met John, kindgoodbeautiful John. Then he had gone and died, left his John behind and found himself alone, and realized how truly lonely he was. Now he was caught in-between, unable to go back to being alone but not yet fit company for actual human beings.

He was an overgrown man-child entering an extremely delayed adolescence.

He was, other words, an idiot.

In the space between a fading dream of love and the practiced denial he needed to function in the waking world, Sherlock lay quiet, and allowed himself the momentary luxury of despair.

***  
By two p.m. on Saturday, he gave in and texted John.

**How is your conference? -SH**

**Sherlock Holmes has never asked about a trip I’ve taken in my life.  
Oh god, you’re a criminal mastermind who has stolen Sherlock’s phone and you’re impersonating him to get my whereabouts. **

**I didn’t say I cared; I was just being polite. One of those things that people like, apparently. -SH**

**Oh Sherlock, it is you. I was confused for a second.**

**BORED. -SH**

**One more day.**

**I’m coming to Sheffield. -SH**

**NO YOU ARE NOT. These are my colleagues.**

**I am your colleague. -SH**

**These are the colleagues for the job that pays me consistently. I don’t need you here deducing their sleazy conference flings.**

**Sounds refreshingly tawdry. I’m buying a ticket now. -SH**

**NO.**

**Fine. I’m going to set fire to the kitchen table, then. -SH**

**Not my place anymore. Have fun. Going to lunch now.**

Sherlock stared at John’s final text longer than was strictly necessary before tossing his phone aside.

“You’ll be sorry when I burn down the flat,” he said sulkily, and he sounded so exactly like a put-upon teenage boy that even Sherlock had the decency to feel a little ashamed. 

***

At three-thirty he texted the DI.

**LESTRADE. I need a case. Preferably a 7 or above, but I will consider anything above a 4 as I am desperate. -SH**

**I’m not bloody Maccy-Ds, mate. You can’t just place an order.**

**I don’t understand the reference. -SH**

**Of course not, posh boy. Also, it’s my day off.**

**MY BRAIN IS MELTING WITH BOREDOM. -SH**

**Come out to the pub then? I’ll buy you one.**

**God, no. -SH**

**Yeah, that’s probably best.**

__

***

At four, he decided body parts--new and interesting ones, not the same old same old he had languishing in the fridge-- might do the trick.

**Molly, haven’t talked to you in awhile. What are you doing this afternoon? -SH**

**Getting ready for a date. Sorry.**

***

At five, he seriously considered cocaine, and feeling a vague grimy sense of shame, decided to table the notion at least until after dark.

***

At half five, he heard footsteps ascending the stairs. Women’s, size seven. 

Sherlock dropped himself into a kitchen chair, picking up an empty beaker and staring intently at it as the door opened.

“John said I’m to come over and make you take me out to dinner,” Mary said.

He looked her up and down with practiced disinterest.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” he asked.

“Just for that,” she answered, “You’re taking me somewhere with a wine list.”

***

They ended up drinking a bottle of outstanding Pinot Noir with dinner. Sherlock knew wine thoroughly, and his travels had taken him to the far corners of South America, so he ended up declaiming at length about the Chilean grape industry and the criminally underrated reds the region consistently produced. Mary had the decency to look interested.

Sherlock grew suddenly aware of his rambling. _People don’t like that_. He shut his mouth with an audible click. Mary tilted her head. 

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I’m boring you,” he said.

“Really, you’re not. I like to learn new things and anyway, I ordered dessert while you were talking. I doubt you noticed.”

“You shouldn’t order dessert.”

Mary’s eyebrow arched.

“You want to lose weight for the wedding. You ordered the dress a size smaller than you usually wear, so you calculated you need to lose a minimum of sixteen, preferably nineteen pounds. It is mid-April, your final dress fitting is the last weekend in July, so you have thirteen weeks. Based on your basal metabolic rate, your calorie allotment is not high enough to allow for half a bottle of wine and a pudding. Therefore, you shouldn’t order dessert.” 

Suddenly, he remembered, clearly, what John once told him: _Whatever you do, mate, do not ever, I mean ever, comment on a woman’s weight. There’s just no coming back from that one, so. Just don’t._

 _I’m such an arsehole._ Sherlock’s shoulders tensed, waiting for her anger.

“How...how did you do that?”

He looked at the floor. “I saw the calculations you made on the back of one of your bridal magazines." Mary's breathing relaxed. He looked up to see her smiling at him. “It’s a waste of effort anyway,” he continued. “You’re perfectly lovely just the way you are. I mean,” he amended lamely, “John thinks you’re lovely just the way you are.”

She laughed. “Sometimes, against all the odds, you manage to pull it out of the fire just in time. Tell you what, I’ll compromise. Share it with me.”

He did. It was delicious.

***

They walked down the street arm in arm, Sherlock deducing passerby for Mary’s entertainment.

“Embezzler. You can tell by the umbrella.”

“She’s stealing her son’s ADHD medication. Just look at her purse.”

“He’s a furry.”

“He’s a what?” Mary stopped, her forehead creasing in confusion.

“He likes to dress up in a plush animal costume and meet with likeminded individuals, most likely leading to a group encounter where--”

“Sherlock Holmes, you are making that up.”

“I do not make things up.”

“Not the fur-whatever-suit part, I watch CSI, but the deduction. I can tell when you’re fibbing.”

He maintained his air of righteous indignation for a moment, but a look from the petite blonde took him down. “Okay, yes. I made that one up.”

“John never catches on, does he?”

“Hasn’t yet.”

***

They came to 221B. Sherlock was about to hail her a cab when Mary laid a hand on his upper arm. She turned him gently to face her and looked into his eyes.

“What are you going to do tonight after I leave?”

Sherlock had a sudden, blinding moment of clarity. 

He wanted her. Not the taste of John on her body, the ghost of John’s fingers on her skin. He wanted Mary.

That realization slotted another harsh truth into place: _This is your best friend’s fiancee. This is wrong. What you want? Is wrong._ The sudden shift in perspective, to how this all would look to an outside perspective--to John--was enough to cause him vertigo.

Worse still, he hadn’t even realized it until this very moment.

 _Yes, you did. Stop lying. You just chose to delete the information_ \--

Worst of all, even in the full, present knowledge of how wrong it was, he still wanted it. Desperately.

He should put her in the next cab, go upstairs, and fix. Easiest thing in the world. Better for everyone involved.

But the icy jittering rush of coke was not what he wanted. What he needed.

_A pair of small soft hands come up behind him, sliding the shirt off his shoulders._

“Don’t leave,” he breathed.

“Okay,” she said, and touched his cheek. “Okay.”

***

_After the rescue, Sherlock spent three days in an Ankara hotel room with Irene Adler._

_There were no whips or chains in her repertoire, this time; Irene instead gave him a crash course on the very basics of human sexuality, an instruction tailored specifically to a thirty-five year old man who had never felt another’s hands touch his body with carnal intent._

_Sherlock had disdained sexual contact his entire life, but the past year had changed him, altered the landscape of his heart in ways he didn't even have language for, made him vulnerable to feelings he didn’t even know he had and longings he couldn’t process._

_Half a continent away from London, in a strange city, in a strange bed, he found himself an eager and willing pupil under her tutelage._

_She showed him how to experience pleasure, how to welcome it, embrace it, instead of viewing his body’s demands as a distraction to be dealt with as efficiently as possible._

_She touched him with hands that alternated between gentle and demanding, between soft and firm. She massaged his back, her hands slick with sandalwood scented oil, and he mentally listed each of the muscles as she stroked him: rhomboid, latissimus dorsi, infraspinatus, serratus anterior, quadratus lumborum. She rubbed his feet, placing a kiss on the inside of each ankle. She traced patterns on the skin of his bare chest with her fingertips and followed them with her tongue as he closed his eyes and sighed._

_She stroked the insides of his thighs, encouraging his legs to fall open, completely bared and trusting to her. She showed him how to touch himself properly, how to treat his cock as a valued instrument instead of an annoying appendage to be handled brusquely and then ignored, how to prolong his orgasm and enjoy it, how to ride the crest of sensation until it broke him open and he spilled himself over his hand, his stomach, the sheets as she brushed the sweat-damp curls from his forehead and called him beautiful._

_She bathed him, shampooing his hair like a small child, then took him back to bed and taught him how to touch her, how to use his fingers inside her, how to press and curl inside her and use his thumb against her clit as she moaned and came, grinding hard against him, tightening against his fingers._

_(And that was a surprise, wasn’t it? Because if Sherlock had a gun to his head and he had to check a box, he would have checked _Pretty Much Gay But Really, the Whole Thing is Tedious_...but he enjoyed it, still, watching himself do that to her, giving her pleasure.)_

_She went down on him, taking him deep into her throat, on her knees in front of him as he leaned against the doorway, watching her lips stretching around his hard length, between his thighs as he lay in bed with his eyes closed, under him as he held onto the headboard and thrust down into her wet, willing mouth. She explained him the basic etiquette of blowjobs--how to hold her head without pulling her hair, how to warn her before he came, and how sometimes it was ok to discard those rules but not without prior negotiation._

_Irene laid him down on his belly, a pillow under his hips, as she slicked her fingers and pressed, gently, against him. “Breathe out and relax,” she instructed, and he did, and her finger breached him, slid into his body, as he tensed with surprise at the odd sensation._

_“It’s all right, darling,” she said, stroking the nape of his neck, gentling him, “just relax, it’s all right--” and she slid in deeper, just so, and--Oh._

_“Yes, “ he exhaled, as she moved in him, deeper then shallower, then added another finger, stretching him. He moved to meet her, then, pushing back against her as she added a third, fucking him properly now. His cock was harder than it had ever been in his life, and as he wrapped his hand around it and squeezed, he thought about arms tanned by a harsh desert sun, strong square hands, whitened knuckles wrapped around the grip of a Sig, so steady._

_“It's okay, dearest,” she said. “I know you’re thinking about him. It’s okay, let yourself go, it’s okay.” He whimpered at the thought of John, inside of him, filling him, taking him, and he fucked his hand as John fucked him until shattered apart into a million shards of glass, making an inhuman strangled noise, biting his lip hard enough to draw blood, coming again for the fourth fifth tenth time against defiled hotel sheets._

_And later, at the very end, he positioned himself above her, her legs wrapped around his waist, and he wanted her, and he took himself in hand to push into her center, and it was nothing, really, wasn’t it, it was the same skin and blood and nerve endings as any other part of his body, the same boring ordinary thing boring ordinary couples managed twice a week after Graham, but he grew still as something inside him broke free from the palace dungeon, some primeval creature of Anglo Saxon upbringing and longing and sentiment escaping and clawing at him--_

_He left that room, heavy with the scent of desire and release, and sat on the balcony, smoking cigarette after cigarette, his prick still heavy and full and foolish against his leg._

_After a time she joined him, stealing his Silk Cuts and blowing streams of smoke into the cool desert air._

_“I don’t love you,” he said._

_“I know,” she answered._

_They smoked in silence for a time, until dawn threaded pink and gold in the east. The muezzin’s mournful tones called the faithful to pre-dawn prayer._

_“Go on, then,” she said, almost kindly. “Go home to your doctor.”_

***

In Sherlock's bedroom, lit only from the glow of the streetlamps, Mary pushed the fabric of his shirt from his shoulders and he kissed her.

Naked against his sheets, her body glowed pale as the moon, her nipples pink and taut, her flesh warm and soft and welcoming and he never even knew he wanted those things but he did, oh he did, and he claimed her mouth, their tongues touching, tasting of wine and creme brulee and laughter. He kissed her neck, licked the shell of her ear, making her gasp.

“Mary,” he murmured. “Mary. I want you. I want--Let me be inside of you.”

She grew still and quiet.

He pulled back and looked at her, at her face, flushed with desire…but her laughing eyes were dark. He had done something wrong.

“Sherlock. Is this about him now, or is this about us?”

He dropped his head to rest on the softness of her breast. She sighed and stroked his hair.

“I want you, God, I do, but...we can't. Not like this.”

He rolled off of her, away from her, the hot clench of shame and rejection burning in his gut. She was right, he knew that, but there was no other way for them that he could see, and he loved both of them and they had each other and he was alone and for the briefest of moments he burned incandescent with hate, blazing with a frightening white hot intensity.

Then it was gone, leaving him hollow. His shoulders sagged.

She touched his back, just above his left iliac crest. “Sherlock, I’m--”

He twisted away from her touch, taking himself off the bed, grabbing his dressing gown as he left the room without a word.

He took himself to his chair, steepling his fingers under his chin, bringing his breathing under control. Pulled himself behind the barricades. He was the great Sherlock Holmes. He was remote. He was untouchable. He was stone.

Long minutes spooled out, copper wire drawn thin and taut.

The bedroom door opened, and Mary emerged fully dressed.

Mary. John’s fiancee. A pleasant enough woman, if one went for thick-armed perimenopausal bottle blondes.

“Sherlock.”

Ordinary. Boring. A perfect companion for John’s prosaic mind and proletarian tastes. God, she was unbearable, really. Why was she even here?

She waited for him to acknowledge her. After several long minutes, she sighed and left. The door shut with a gentle click.

It was for the best, really, that she and John were getting married. They could inflict their mundane opinions and dreadful tastes on each other until the end of time and spare the rest of the world the tedium.

Sherlock sat, unmoving, for several long hours.

Sometime after that, he realized no one cared if he smoked, so he unearthed an ancient pack he hid in the flat long ago and chain-smoked half of them, one after the other, using one of Mrs. Hudson’s good teacups as an ashtray, feeling vaguely ill after the third but powering through anyway out of sheer bloody-mindedness.

As he smoked, he visualized the exact dimensions of his box, took each and every component out and examined it carefully in his mind.

 _You want to be better for them?_ , Mycroft’s voice whispered--and of course his conscience took on the voice of Mycroft, of course it did because Sherlock didn’t have one, couldn’t have one, so the one he did have apparently had to be an intolerable hateful pudgy bastard--

_Shut up for once, Sherlock, and listen to me. You want to be better for them? You want to deserve them? Start with the obvious, you bloody arrogant child, and _be better.__

He didn’t shoot up. He smoked the rest of the cigarettes, and drank the last three fingers of the Macallan, and burned a throw pillow with an acetylene torch until the smell of singed feathers and secondhand smoke was an unbearable acrid reek. 

He stayed awake, eyes gritty with exhaustion, until London dawn rose dreary and grey.

But he didn’t shoot up.

***

**I’m back. Mary said dinner was nice.**

**Tolerable. She needs to cut down on her carb intake, or her bridesmaids will have to roll her down the aisle. -SH**

**You are a right bastard, aren’t you?**

**Yes. In future, I seem to require the presence of both of you for optimal social interaction. The two of you added together equal the brainpower of one ALMOST intellectually tolerable companion. -SH**

**I leave town for three days and you get stroppy.**

**I am not stroppy. -SH**

**Yes you are. Hey, what do you know about table linens?**

**I once went undercover as a catering manager. Caught a murdering vicar by the pattern of crumbs left under a bread plate.-SH**

**I’ll take that as a yes. Would you mind helping us make some decisions?**

**Sounds dreadful. Come over at seven. -SH**


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “The division seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business, I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”
> 
> “For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.
> 
> \--Arthur Conan Doyle, _The Sign of Four_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, I Went There. 
> 
> Next up, John's POV.
> 
> I promise things will look up soon!

“The division seems rather unfair,” I remarked. “You have done all the work in this business, I get a wife out of it, Jones gets the credit, pray what remains for you?”

“For me,” said Sherlock Holmes, “there remains the cocaine-bottle.” And he stretched his long white hand up for it.  
\--Arthur Conan Doyle, _The Sign of Four_

 

_John is drunk, and his balance bobbles a bit. He grasps Sherlock’s knee--okay, it was above the knee, really, not quite thigh but above the knee for sure, so let’s just say leg--he grasps Sherlock’s leg to right himself. “I don’t mind,” John mumbles, shrugging._

_Sherlock’s throat, already parched from far too much alcohol, constricts._

_John rights himself, leans back in his chair and grins, and Sherlock’s drink-soaked brain realizes that he could have him, if he wanted. He could lean over, grab John by the collar and kiss him, take him into the bedroom and shag him senseless boneless mindless. He could._

_But just because Sherlock is drunk doesn’t mean his mind is slowed, just skewed, and he sees clearly down the road that course of action would lead them. The sloppy frantic sex. The immediate recriminations. The embarrassment and possibly anger of a self-identified heterosexual man having a very poorly-timed sexual identity crisis. The avoidance. The severing of ties._

_The end of everything._

_He could shag John Watson senseless tonight, but if he did Sherlock would lose him forever._

_He was still tempted, that was the awful part. He was still so very tempted. He could visualize the shimmering heat between the two of them, the desperate wet kisses, the fumbling of fingers against fabric, the feel of cool air on exposed heated flesh…_

_John was saying something. Sherlock blinks. Redirects his treacherous thoughts. Lets the moment pass._

_“Am I… a woman?”_

_Sherlock can’t help but laugh. Of the things in the world that John Watson is (kindstrongbravecrankyshortfunny), the one thing Sherlock knows for certain is that John is more of a man than anyone he has ever known._

_Oh, it’s that ridiculous game they’re playing. Shit, he is really drunk. How did this happen?_

_And the night continues, and the evening slips away from them in a drunken haze, never to be recaptured._

_Most of it Sherlock is glad to delete._

_But he remembers the warm weight of John’s hand on his knee (leg). He doesn’t delete that._

***

Sherlock Holmes was the second-smartest man in England. It had taken every ounce of his intellect, planning, and subterfuge to hide the purchase and possession of three 50 milliliter vials of medical-grade cocaine hydrochloride from the smartest man in England. 

He rolled the sealed bottle across his slender fingers, considering.

He knew how this looked. It looked like Sherlock Holmes, six feet of ridiculous man-child in a posh coat, was having a colossal emotional tantrum over his best friend’s marriage and impending child. It looked like he was planning to act out to get attention. It looked like he was seeking a way to force John Watson to return to him, to care for him, to keep him on the straight and narrow. 

It looked like he was an enormous, selfish, manipulative arsehole.

The thing was, Sherlock knew the truth was far more nuanced and complex than the facts, baldly stated, could ever convey. 

He had done his best to be a true friend to John and Mary Watson. He had gone to a wedding. With people. He stood as best man. He had given the most agonizing speech of his life. He had smiled and he had congratulated the couple on their impending arrival.

He deduced the arrival of a third, an expansion of their family and an expression of their love, and although something huge and bottomless yawned at his feet, instead of shutting them down, shutting them out, he reaffirmed--again, in front of, ugh, people--to care and protect for them.

And then he walked away, away from music and lights and laughter, knowing that his time as part of (let’s face it, as the center of) their lives was over. 

For once in his life, as his long legs carried him away from the two people he loved most in all the world, Sherlock fought hard--really, truly hard--to stay out of the kind of self-pity he usually indulged in. No one loved a good wallow more than Sherlock Holmes, generally speaking; but he had decided to try and grow into different person. A better person. A person who put the ones he loved ahead of himself. He had made a vow. 

And he had every intention of keeping his word. He had been a terrible person, and done terrible things. This was how he planned to make it right.

But, the thing was, it hurt. It hurt horribly.

Sherlock was a man who was absolutely inured to rejection. This was different. This wasn’t the rude comments and sneering dismissal of dull boring usual obvious people--who cared a whit about them? 

This was carving out chunks of his freshly unearthed, newly exposed heart.

And for that kind of surgery, he needed anaesthesia. And because he cared, for once, about not hurting others, he needed to make sure no one knew.

He had chosen the ideal spot on his lower calf--the Great Saphenous Vein, a bit inconvenient, but relatively easy to access by one with a reasonable amount of anatomical knowledge, hidden by trousers and therefore much easier to conceal than the crook of the elbow, where his veins were already scarred and prone to sclerosing, collapse and infection. That would never do. He was seeking to go undetected, not planning a cry for help like some overwrought teenager.

He had a schedule mapped out, a precise administration of just the minimal dose he needed to breathe past the pain and clear his cloudy brain--his stupid, sick, hatefully slow brain--so he could find the strength and focus to return again to the Work he had neglected. The stimulant was titrated against either a rotating schedule of lorazepam 0.5 mg or 20 milliliters of Macallan 30, to smooth the comedown and relax his CNS enough for food and sleep when absolutely necessary.

Other, lesser people had drug habits. Sherlock Holmes self-medicated for optimum performance.

He liked this plan. It was a good plan.

***

John Watson was on his honeymoon. Mrs. Hudson brought up the postcard, something ridiculous from a sunny location Sherlock couldn’t even be bothered to remember, scrawled “Wish you were here! XOXO John and Mary.” At the bottom was a postscript in John’s cramped physician scrawl. “Really do wish you were here, the bandleader’s a sketchy sort and I’m sure there’s a story there. JW”

Mrs. Hudson had dropped it on the coffee table and Sherlock took absolutely no notice of it until she was safely gone and then he picked it up, registered the relevant information --John had drunk several cocktails, going by the placement of the stamps, and the dried spot of aloe vera gel indicated Mary likely had a sunburn--and dropped it on the floor with a sigh. 

Sherlock rolled up his trouser leg and found the vein. He swabbed, drew the solution from the vial, and hesitated for just a moment before sliding the needle home, drawing up just a fraction, then depressing the plunger, staring blankly at the square of cardstock that lay forgotten on the dusty carpet.

Blissful, clear numbness, followed by electric sparks climbing, climbing, climbing to explode in his brain. Anguish receded. His brain vibrated with shimmering clarity.

He leaned back in his chair, syringe dropping from numb fingers. His heart galloped, stuttered, settled.

Mycroft was right. Just like the old days, indeed.

***

Sherlock was relieved that the tedious need to eat fell away. His weight routine (a habit he had picked up during that interesting stint in the American federal prison system, tracking down a methamphetamine distributor who was the keystone to Moriarty’s Southwestern operations) came to nothing, and the extra muscle he carried began to disappear.

Mrs Hudson soon commented on the prominence of his cheekbones, however, and Sherlock realized he needed to prioritise his commitment to keeping up appearances. He resumed doing pushups. He waited an additional hour in between doses of cocaine, took an extra Ativan, and when they played Cluedo, he made a point of chewing his way through at least two unwanted biscuits.

They sat like wet cement in his stomach.

***

Sherlock laid awake, bones vibrating, imagining John and Mary making lazy, sunburned post-dinner love in the humid tropical darkness. He wished he was in between them, feeling the sweat and slide of their bodies against his skin.

***

Sherlock habituated quickly to the benzos and increased the dosage.

His source of medical-grade cocaine disappeared. Sherlock, feeling increasingly paranoid, was certain his brother had encased the man in concrete and sent him to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean. 

He invented experiments, staying up late into the night to culture bacteria, dissect flatworms, observe insect larvae in all stages of development.

He cleaned, compulsively, very small segments of the flat. The fireplace mantel. The kitchen sink. He swept behind John’s chair (finding three goldsilverbronze hairs and placing them carefully between the pages of a slim volume of Yeats), organized teaspoons. The rest of the flat slipped into wreck and ruin.

He solved cases.

He broke the seal on his last bottle with trepidation. He would need to find something more soon, and buying street drugs seriously compromised the fiction of strictly scientific self medication, didn’t it?

***

Sherlock peered closely at the sprawled corpse, examining the ten stumps where the digits had been cleanly severed. He breathed deeply, closed his eyes. Opened them. Stood, stripped off the latex gloves, and turned to Lestrade.

“He was having an affair with his piano teacher. If the teacher’s husband has a blue sedan, arrest him. Domestic. Boring. Honestly, barely worth my time.”

He whirled around and strode toward the door. Lestrade caught hold of his coat sleeve, and before he could stop himself, Sherlock shook the man’s hand off in irritation. Being touched, even through the heavy wool of his coat, made his skin crawl and itch unbearably.

“What if the husband doesn’t have a blue car?” Lestrade asked.

“Highly unlikely.” Sherlock suddenly felt like this room was far too small and warm. He moved towards the door, desperate for some cool air, trying not to show it.

“Sherlock. You ok, mate?” Lestrade called.

“Wonderful. Fantastic. Extraordinary,” Sherlock huffed as he left the room.

***

Lestrade made a drugs bust the next day. Sherlock pulled a face and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

“I lose my...my babysitter and you think I’ve fallen to pieces,” he spat sarcastically.

Lestrade looked at him carefully, opened his mouth to say something, changed his mind and turned away.

Of course, they found nothing in the flat.

Incompetent, the lot of them.

***

With the next to last hit of the cocaine HCL 4% singing in his veins, Sherlock came to two simultaneous realisations.

One, John and Mary’s three-week honeymoon was drawing to an end. They would be back in London in four days.

Two, returning to cocaine, while seeming a fantastic solution at the time, had been, in all honesty, a terrible idea. Though Lestrade was generally an idiot, the man was intuitive in a way that Sherlock could never hope to comprehend, and he knew the DI’s sixth sense was pinging like mad. Chances were he had already reached out to Mycroft. The minute Sherlock had to venture out to procure, the game would almost certainly be up, with consequences to Sherlock likely quite dire, given his record.

But he needed more. So venture out he would.

Sherlock, the stupidest second-smartest man in all of England, knew he teetered on the very knife edge of a ridiculous, unnecessary self-created Situation. So he took some more, just to obliterate that knowledge for a little while longer.

***

Sherlock Holmes tried all his previous connections, as well as turning to the homeless network and some Estonian mob operatives who owed him a favour or six.

No one would sell him any fucking cocaine.

***

The inevitable sequelae of Sherlock Having a Situation was, of course, the Mycroft Incursion of Condescending Concern. It happened at 11:15 a.m. These visits always happened at 11:15 a.m. Sherlock supposed he was being slotted in between other, more pressing meetings.

He was ready, dressed impeccably in his favorite aubergine shirt and black trousers, in his chair before a methodically laid but unlit fireplace. Mycroft spoke briefly to Mrs. Hudson in a low murmur before his handmade Italian loafers ascended heavily on the steps-- _God, even his footsteps sound smug, how is that even possible?_ \--and he entered the room, not even thinking of bothering to knock, sending the dustmotes swirling about as he disturbed Sherlock’s precious funereal gloom. He seated himself on John’s chair, knowing that the presumption would piss Sherlock off, spur him into speaking, saying something heated and hateful and betraying his private thoughts. 

Sherlock, tanked to the gills on Ativan to keep from shaking, sighed and closed his eyes.

“Self-pity is such an unattractive trait, Sherlock.”

Sherlock inhaled through his nose and said nothing.

“Why must you punish yourself and everyone around you, brother dear?”

“Whatever do you mean?” Sherlock said, slowly, trying to sham bored disinterest.

“Surely whatever worst-case scenario you’ve constructed can’t be worse than...this.”

Sherlock opened his eyes and cocked his head. “Than what?”

Mycroft gazed levelly at Sherlock, refusing to take the bait.

Sherlock scowled theatrically, rolled up his sleeves, and showed his bare arms to Mycroft. The older man was clearly unimpressed.

“Really, Sherlock. As if a relapsed addict on a binge wouldn’t be a bit more...creative with their choice of injection sites.”

“I am not ‘on a binge’, Mycroft. I have some self control, unlike you around a biscuit tin.” Sherlock snapped his mouth reflexively shut, but the damning words had already escaped.

Mycroft smirked at how easily Sherlock gave himself up. Sherlock buttoned his cuffs in stony silence.

“And I can tell from your slowed reaction time and the color of your skin that you’re on benzodiazepines right now to ease the craving. Valium? No, Lorazepam."

Mycroft shifted minutely in the chair, drawing himself up just slightly into his I Am Making A Pronouncement posture.

“You are cut off, Sherlock. Done. No one in London will sell you anything stronger than paracetamol.”

Sherlock started to roll his eyes and found it surprisingly painful. So instead he just gazed at his brother, expressionless.

Mycroft returned the stare. A moment passed, and his brother looked away for just a beat then regarded him again, this time with something resembling true sympathy. Sherlock felt ill. Snide, smug and condescending were all expected, and could be dealt with accordingly. But concern? Caring? It brought an agony Sherlock could never figure out how to properly barricade himself against.

Sherlock closed his eyes and felt the tightness in his ribs. Perhaps a drug-induced heart attack would spare him the rest of this exhausting slog.

“Just tell me, Sherlock. If you can’t tell him, tell me.”

“I’m not telling you a thing. Bring in your minions if you must, but I’m not telling you a thing.”

“Then we’ll flip the script,” Mycroft replied steadily. “I will tell you.

“You’re in love with John Watson. You have been from the day you met. You returned from London and thought he would be here, waiting for you, playing the grieving widower. Instead, he found Mary Morstan.

“You were jealous, but you found you couldn’t quite hate her, could you? But even if you didn’t hate her, you envied her closeness with John, her access to parts of him denied to you.

“Spurred by envy and your complete inability to recognise boundaries, you committed certain...indiscretions with Ms. Morstan.”

Anger burning through the cotton wool in his brain, Sherlock sat up and glared murderous arrows at Mycroft. If he had installed cameras in the flat again…

“Relax, Sherlock. There is no surveillance in the building, as we agreed. Baker Street, however? Still falls under my purview.”

“The thrills you get from spying on my personal life. Honestly, Mycroft, it’s creepy.”

“Says the man who gets his thrills by pawing at his beloved’s wife.”

_I could shove my hand through Mycroft’s solar plexus, just under the xyphoid process, behind the lungs, ripping out his still beating heart..._

“Sherlock. I know your understanding of normal human relationships is lacking, but how could you not see that using Mary as a poor substitute for what you really want is wrong?”

Sherlock waved his hand as if to dismiss the entire thing. “It’s all ended long ago, anyway. Not a relevant data point at this time.”

He was going for a tone of bored disdain and missed by a mile. Mycroft looked up in a rare show of genuine surprise. “Oh. You have developed an attachment to her as well, then. How interesting.”

 _Even with a slowed reaction time, I could leap up this instant and do it. I could watch the look of surprise on his hateful fat face as he expired, blood pouring from his body..._

“I must say I am surprised, Sherlock. I never really expected you to show any inclination at all towards the opposite sex, let alone someone so prosaic.”

 _MI5 would mow me down in the next blink of an eye, but it would be worth it. It would be_ glorious.

“Well,” Mycroft murmured. “This is quite the soap opera, isn’t it, then? How positively Eastenders of you. Please tell me the baby’s not yours.” 

Sherlock tilted his head back and stared blankly at a water stain on the ceiling plaster, but inside he gave the briefest of thanks to a ludicrous fictional deity that Mary had possessed the presence of mind to stop him from--

“Well, that is a small relief.” Mycroft picked up a chess piece. Black bishop. He examined it closely as he spoke.

“Sherlock. Tell me. If you are so attached to both of them, how do you propose to make this work? How do you think you will be able to care for two...goldfish in your bowl?”

“I killed eleven men while I was away,” Sherlock said to the ceiling in the most neutral, civilised tone possible. Only another Holmes would be able to detect the black ice beneath.

“Did you now.”

“I shot six. Three of them I used a knife. In Montevideo I tricked a man into taking poison. In Leavenworth I stabbed a man with a shiv made out of a plastic toothbrush. He died of septicaemia in the prison infirmary, but I still count it.”

Mycroft raised an eyebrow.

“I took no pleasure in those deaths. None of them were personal. But I swear, Mycroft, I will gleefully rip out your intestines with my bare fucking hands if you don’t leave right now.”

“Sherlock--”

“I will wear them as a necklace, and I will look you in the eye and smile as you exsanguinate and die gasping. Get out.”

Mycroft merely inclined his head, as if they had just exchanged the most mundane of pleasantries. He placed the bishop back on the board and stood, brushing imaginary lint off his immaculate trousers.

Several seconds passed before Mycroft spoke again.

“Sherlock, if you truly are unable to let this go, you need to know something. They do love you back. Everyone can see it but you. Maybe in the way you want, maybe not. There are some things even I don’t know. But this, Sherlock, if they are what you want you have to know that this...martyrdom? This self-immolation? Whatever it is, it will never, ever get you closer what you need.”

As his brother crossed the sitting room, Sherlock remembered the voice inside him, the one that spoke in the same cultured tones as his brother.

 _You want to be better? Then_ be better.

The anger flowed out of him with a shocking suddenness, leaving a hollowness inside his gut and an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

Or perhaps that was the drugs.

His brother had his hand on the doorknob as Sherlock spoke in a just slightly chastened tone.

“Mycroft. Don’t tell him. I’ll get clean. Just...don’t tell him. Please.”

Mycroft sighed, just a barely audible puff of breath, and straightened his shoulders before opening the door.

“As you wish, brother.”

***

Sherlock got clean. It was, as ever, horrid.

***

John and Mary returned, and invited him over for Sunday dinner. Sherlock tried to think of something to bring, but everything that he would like to have as a small gift--molars? a strain of lethal black mould? a blowgun dart poison made only by one dwindling indigenous tribe deep in the Amazon?--seemed not quite a good fit, so he brought nothing.

John clapped him on the back and seemed happy to see him. Sherlock glanced at his tanned arms and swallowed back a sense memory of sandalwood and white sheets.

He looked at their vacation pictures, and deduced that the bandleader had recently ended a clandestine affair with the dashingly handsome sushi chef, and was deathly afraid of the man’s formidable knife talent and explosive jealousy.

Mary was flushed pink and smiling, not really showing yet anywhere but in her larger breasts and the slight roundness of her cheeks. She made a roast chicken and a salad and fresh homemade bread and he could tell everything was delicious and he tried to be a good guest, but it all tasted like glue and ashes in his mouth.

He made excuses, and left early. He had a thing.

***

Sherlock survived.

He wasn’t happy. And he wasn’t whole. But he stayed clean. And there were cases, and John was by his side sometimes, not quite close enough to touch and it was different but John was there sometimes and that was good.

Sherlock survived.

***

Then one day he took a knife to the ribs and an unscheduled dip in the Thames, and his carefully negotiated, horrendously bleak existence finally, thankfully exploded back into marvelous Technicolor intensity.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John took a step over the edge of the abyss, into thin air.
> 
> “What would you think if I told you that I do think about him. Sometimes. Like that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which we see things from John's point of view.
> 
> This chapter was a little bit of a struggle. John's English. He was reticent to discuss some of this. Feelings are hard.
> 
> (I wish I was kidding. Mary and I get along like a house afire, Sherlock loves to hear himself talk, and John has a hard time articulating his inner emotional landscape. I think I'm losing my mind.)
> 
> Send any private correspondence to CaitlinFairchild1976@gmail.com. I'm still looking for beta and Britpick help!

_“...We can’t all dance together,” said John. “There are limits.”_

_Sherlock tilted his head just slightly and gave him an unreadable look. “Yes. There are.”_

***

John was every inch the stereotypical Englishman on Holiday.

He consumed brightly-coloured, umbrella-strewn tropical drinks. He wore shorts and sandals, exposing his fishbelly-pale limbs to the tropical sun, forgetting sun cream and burning his sensitive British flesh to a crisp. He swam in the ocean and napped in a hammock and half-read bad crime novels. His wife wore a lovely flowing cotton sundress and they walked hand-in-hand along the ocean, waves lapping gently at their bare feet.

They sat on the beach at sunset, digging their toes in the fine white sand. John watched the horizon blaze in orange and gold as the sun slipped lower in the sky.

_On the other side of Mary sits Sherlock, dressed for a day on the streets of London rather than a tropical resort. His long pale feet are covered in sand, his charcoal trousers rolled halfway up his legs. He clasps his arms round his knees, his white dress shirt stretched across the strong muscles of his back. The sun has brought out a dusting of freckles across his nose, making him look far younger than his thirty-eight years._

Mary nudged him gently in the ribs. “Penny for your thoughts.”

He ducked his head sheepishly. What kind of bloke daydreams about his best friend while on his honeymoon? “Nothing really. I was just, uh.”

“I know.” She squeezed his arm and leaned on his shoulder. “We should have just brought him along, I think.”

 _How does she always know exactly when I’m thinking about Sherlock?_ John wondered. 

But she had a point. John didn’t feel quite right about leaving Sherlock behind, and rather wished he was here to complain, to be petted and fussed over, to deduce strangers, to insult servers, to make them laugh. Sherlock should have felt like a third wheel on their lives but instead his presence--his irritating, condescending, arrogant, rude, charming, wry presence--seemed to bind the three of them together instead. 

Sometimes, John thought, a third wheel is a stabilizer. A bicycle falls over. A tricycle doesn’t. 

_Was that weird?_

Yes, he decided. Yes, it was weird.

“Well,” he said aloud, “bringing Sherlock Holmes along on my honeymoon. That would raise quite a few eyebrows.”

Mary smiled as she gazed out over the water.

“I don’t understand you sometimes, John,” she said gently. “You invade Afghanistan and solve crimes and save lives, and yet when it comes to Sherlock, sometimes you get so fixated on the rules, on what people think. Why on earth do you care so much what people _think_?”

“Because--” John said, and then words failed him, because he didn’t know why he cared what people think, except that he didn’t want people to think that he--

“Again, darling, why do you care? Why do you care if the world thinks you’re shagging Sherlock Holmes? You know, I take the position that people thinking you’re sleeping with a famous, brilliant, handsome detective is really quite a compliment.”

John had no good answer to that, so he said nothing and watched the sun, an enormous ball of fire, sink into the sea and disappear.

***  
“Oh God,” he groaned aloud.

Mary peered over his shoulder at the laptop screen. “A Sex Holiday,” she read, laughing. 

John scrubbed at his eyes and sighed. “He does like to get to the point of things, doesn’t he.”

“He’s pretty much right, though. Everyone knows what people get up to on a honeymoon, but nobody else will come right out and say it.”

“Nobody except the great, obnoxious, poncy git Sherlock Holmes,” John said, but there was a smile tugging at his lips. He tapped out a quick reply and hit enter.

Mary pulled the sundress over her head and threw it on the side chair. Her belly was still flat, but her breasts were full and lush and lovely, her nipples bigger and dark pink against her the paleness of her skin. She smiled almost shyly at her new husband, and stretched out on the bed, sighing. “Close that bloody laptop down, Mr. Watson, and come over here. This is our Sex Holiday and I’m not letting it go to waste.”

He complied, rising from the chair and joining her on the bed. “Be gentle with me, Mrs. Watson. I have a hell of a sunburn.”

She reached up and cupped the back of his head, bringing his mouth down for a kiss. John loved the way her lips felt against his, the way her mouth opened to him, her tongue touching and sliding against his own as he tasted her. His hands found her breasts and cupped them, so very gently, she was so sensitive right now the least pressure was too much sometimes.

He kissed the side of her neck, her collarbone, tasting the dip of her suprasternal notch. She tasted of the ocean and of aloe, and she squirmed and giggled a bit when his tongue tickled her.

John sat back on his heels and stripped off his T-shirt, hissing through his teeth at the friction of the fabric against his burned neck. Mary’s fingers helped him with the fly of his shorts, and he twisted and struggled for a moment to get free of the last scraps of clothing. Naked, he knelt between her spread legs, just taking a moment to appreciate how lucky he was to have his beautiful wife underneath him.

He had been so alone, and now his life was so full. He had Mary, his Mary, and then Sherlock had come back to him and-- His face must have gone funny, because Mary looked at him with concern and brought her hand up to touch his cheek. “John. Sweetheart. What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” He took her face in her hands and kissed her. “Everything’s perfect. You’re perfect.”

He was hard already, he was on his Sex Holiday of course he was hard, and he slid easily into her wet perfect heat, bringing her legs up over his shoulders. He moved inside her gently, because even though he was a medical doctor he had still had that typical male hangup about hurting the baby, that same worry he had laughingly reassured young couples about, which he knew was silly, but still, this was different, this was his wife and his child…

“John. The baby is the size of a cocktail onion, pregnant ladies have been having sex for a million years, yes your cock is handsome and impressive but you’re not going to do any damage, so will you please get over it now and fuck me properly?”

So he did, well and properly, and everything was perfect and if he thought fleetingly about how there was a missing piece, a six foot detective-shaped missing piece--well, that just wasn’t a done thing, was it? It wasn’t proper to wish that he could have this, have this kind of happiness and closeness and pleasure with both of them. There were rules.

So he put it out of his mind and made Sex Holiday love to his wife.

***  
Late one night, they took a blanket down to the beach and looked the stars, pinpoint jewels on a black velvet sky, a breathtaking display London had never seen.

John wondered if Sherlock still knew about astronomy, or if he had long since deleted it all.

***  
 _John looks at Sherlock. He has a hint of sunburn now, pink across his cheeks and the bridge of his nose. His hair is a dark mop of curls, windswept from the ocean breeze as he looks across the blue water._

_His beautiful pale eyes look so distant and pensive. John has a vague, unsettling sensation that he is the reason Sherlock looks so sad._

_He tentatively reaches out and grasps Sherlock’s forearm. It feels solid and warm under the fine white cotton._

_Sherlock turns his face to him, pins him squarely with those depthless marble eyes. “John. What do you want?”_

_John sighs. “I don’t...I don’t know, Sherlock. I’m confused.”_

_“Are you confused, or are you afraid?”_

_John takes his hand away from Sherlock’s sleeve and scoops a handful of warm sand, watches it sift between his fingers._

_Sherlock looks around him, surveying their surroundings, making deductions. “John, it seems utterly obvious that I am merely a manifestation of your subconscious. Are you so afraid of admitting your feelings towards me are more than platonic that you can’t even acknowledge them to your own mind?”_

_“No. That’s not what I’m afraid of.”_

_“What, then?”_

_The waves come in, then slip away. John takes a deep breath. “Sherlock, I’m sorry. I...I don’t know how. I don’t know how to make the leap from here. I’m not…” John has a sudden moment of understanding. “I don’t really care about anyone thinking I’m gay. I mean I care, some, because it’s such a big shift to myself, to how I see myself and my life, but that doesn’t mean I think it’s bad. I could handle it if it was just that. But there’s more. I’m afraid if I make that jump, that you won’t be there to catch me and I’ll be humiliated. You’ll tell me that you don’t do that, that you’re...not. That you don’t. And that would crush me. Overcoming both those fears...I could deal with one, or the other. But both? It’s just too far to jump. I’ll fall, Sherlock, and I can’t survive another fall.”_

_Sherlock looks down at the sand between his knees, abashed._

_“And there’s Mary. I love her, Sherlock. She saved my life, after you left. I want her. I want to be with her. I truly, truly do.”_

_“But you haven’t really made a choice yet, have you?” Sherlock says. “You still want both of us. You still think that somehow you can make it work, somehow you can have the two of us.”_

_“What makes you say that?” John asks._

_Sherlock smiles at him then, his ‘I’m the smart one and you’re an idiot’ smile. “Honestly, John. It’s obvious. I wouldn’t be here in your dream if you didn’t.”_

***

The last night of their honeymoon, they went dancing. John wore a jacket and Mary put on makeup and perfume and they swayed under the stars together, enjoying the their last hours on the island. John kept noticing the bandleader looking sweaty and nervous, glancing repeatedly over to the double doors leading to the dining room.

“What is going on with the bandleader?” Mary asked. “I swear, he seems as if he is about to pop out of his skin and run screaming into the night.”

“If Sherlock were here--” John started, and then he stopped. After the dream on the beach, he had carefully avoided bringing Sherlock up in conversation for the remainder of the trip.

“John.”

“No. I don’t want to drag Sherlock Holmes behind us wherever we go. It’s not fair. It’s not fair to us and it’s not fair to you.”

“John. Darling.” Mary pulled her head away from John’s shoulder and looked at him squarely. “It’s ok. I know you love him. I know what he means to you. It’s ok.”

“You make it sound like--”

“I don’t make it sound like anything. It is what it is, and I’m all right with it. You need to make your peace with it too.” She held him tightly then, and laid her head back on his shoulder.

“Now let’s finish this dance, and then go upstairs and finish out our Sex Holiday with a bang.”

John couldn’t help but laugh. “That was just terrible.”

***

His wife’s small hands undressed him in the near dark of their room. She climbed on top of him and guided his cock into her, letting out a breathy sigh as he filled her deeply. He let her set the pace and she rode him leisurely, leaning back against his legs so he could watch her.

“Mary,” he said, thinking about their conversation on the dance floor, feeling brave, knowing that if he didn’t say this right now, tonight, he’d lose the courage and they’d be back in London and he’d never find it again.

“Yes, darling.”

“What you said before, about Sherlock.”

“Mm-hmm.”

He thought about black hair, full lips, icy pale eyes.

John took a step over the edge of the abyss, into thin air.

“What would you think if I told you that I do think about him. Sometimes. Like that.”

And Mary, bless her. She caught him. Kissed him, hard.

“I would think that was the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever heard in my life.”

Freed by her acceptance, her love, her permission, John allowed himself to imagine Sherlock. He pictured his fingers entwined in dark curls, his lips on that beautiful mouth, a long lean male body against his own. An electric thrill shot through him. He grabbed Mary’s hips hard, thrusting up into her.

Mary slid her hand between them, her fingers sliding into slick folds. She stroked herself in time as they moved together.

“I think about him, too,” she whispered. “Is that all right, that I think about him? About you and him? About us, all of us together?”

_\--Visions of limbs entwined sliding together, of hands and mouths on his body, flesh both hard and yielding, all of them touching and tasting and moving and--_

“Oh, fuck,” John moaned. “Yes.”

Mary’s breathing grew ragged as her body tightened around him and she came, grinding herself down onto him as she keened and he followed her, down down down into a tight slick spiral. “Mary,” he rasped. “I want, I want--” and he came, harder than he ever had before, stars exploding behind his eyes. Wave upon wave of pleasure carried him as he spurted into her, mindless, blissful. 

***

“It’s just words, you know,” he said later into the dark. “It doesn’t mean...it doesn’t mean anything.”

“I know, darling,” Mary said, her voice warm and satiated. She stroked his back. “Go to sleep, now.”

In the bright light of early morning, boarding a diesel-smelling airport shuttle, John wondered if it had really happened at all.

***

They had been back in London for three days and he hadn’t texted Sherlock.

Mary made no mention of it, but invited Sherlock over for Sunday dinner and only informed John after the fact.

John felt a momentary jolt of nerves when Sherlock came through the front door 

\-- _fingers entwined in dark curls_ \--

but his genuine pleasure at seeing his best friend again carried him past the moment of discomfort and it was gone.

He noticed Sherlock looked a little drawn, maybe a little worn out around the edges. He felt a flash of guilt-- _maybe we really should have taken him with us_ , he thought--then decided that was ridiculous. The great Sherlock Holmes didn’t need them fussing over him 24/7. He had survived thirty-four years before John Watson. He was fine.

“Working hard then, love?” Mary asked as she cleared salad plates. Sherlock’s was barely touched, but that was nothing new. “You look a bit tired.”

“Very hard, in fact,” said Sherlock. “In fact, I have to leave shortly. I have a quite pressing matter to attend to.”

“Need some help?” John asked.

“Thank you John, but no. It’s brainwork, mainly. Not really your area of expertise.”

***

“What are we looking for, again?” John asked, flicking the torch around the darkened warehouse.

“Crates. Wooden, likely. Ukrainian lettering. Maybe Russian.”

“I’m flattered that you think I could tell the difference between Ukrainian and Russian.”

“I don’t. Just look for Cyrillic script.”

“Got it.” John moved deeper into the stacked containers, searching for Cyrillic lettering, when he heard the unmistakable grunts and thumps of an attacker. He ran towards the source of the noise to find Sherlock grappling with six foot three of tattooed thug. 

John was unarmed. At two in the afternoon, there hadn’t seemed much need to carry a gun for hunting down smuggled fish eggs-- _Genetically engineered caviar swapped for the real thing, John, fascinating! How novel! How profitable!_ \--but now he rued that decision as he launched all five foot six inches of himself at Sherlock’s attacker. He got the man in a chokehold, enabling Sherlock to twist from the man’s clutches and land several solid blows, laying him out on the ground.

Just as they were getting the upper hand, however, another large, pungent weight crashed into John, sending him reeling.

“John!” Sherlock shouted, but John was much quicker and more competent than this particular lowlife, and dropped him with a single efficient punch to the jaw.

“I’ve got him,” John panted, flipping the dazed man over--Christ, he was heavy--as his companion, not as incapacitated has he initially seemed, scrambled to his feet and ran away. “I’ve got him, Lestrade will be here in a minute, go catch that fucker!”

Sherlock took off after the suspect, coat flying after him, as John fished a zip-tie out of his pocket and fastened the man’s hands behind his back. The man stirred and muttered. 

“Sorry, mate. Don’t know if you’re speaking Ukranian or Russian,” John informed him cheerfully.

That’s when he heard the yell, the heart-stopping splash of a body hitting water, footsteps running away. Then silence.

 _Don’t leave me yet,_ John’s mind screamed in panic. _I’m just getting it figured out. I need more time. Don’t leave me yet._

***

Sherlock washed up on the bank of the Thames not half a mile downstream. He had managed to shed his coat and shoes and get himself to shore, despite the knife wound to his lower left flank. 

John called Mary from the hospital.

“How bad is it?” she asked.

“Not ideal, but not terrible. The blade just barely missed his kidney, doesn’t look like it nicked his peritoneum but they’re not sure.”

“I’m coming down right now,” she said.

“No, stay home. Get some sleep tonight, I’m sure they’ll keep him at least 24 hours, then you will be rested to come in the morning and stay with him,” he said. She argued a bit, but she was at that point where she got tired easily, so after John had adequately assured her Sherlock was in no danger she soon acquiesced. John rang off, pocketed the mobile, and went back to Sherlock’s room.

(They weren’t officially family, but one or both of them had ended up needing medical care so many times that Mycroft must have put in some kind of override in their records, because no one ever challenged them about their right to be in the room any longer.)

John never, ever got used to the sight of Sherlock in a hospital gown. He looked so exposed, so pale and gangly, even with a blanket over him. His bare toes peeked out from the bottom hem.

Lestrade was there, glaring at Sherlock, clearly waiting for John to arrive before launching into a tirade.

“What is it with you two and falling in the bloody Thames?” he ranted, waving around his notepad for emphasis. “You are aware that ninety nine point nine percent of London is in fact nice dry ground, and you keep ending up In. The. Fucking. Thames.”

Sherlock stirred. “Actually,” he said weakly, “The true ratio of dry land versus bodies of water in the greater London area is--”

“Oi, you,” Lestrade growled. “Shut it.”

Sherlock shut it.

“All I’m saying is...is stop. Stop falling in rivers and giving me fucking heart attacks. Please and thank you. Now, you,” he said, rounding on John, “I need your statement. Let’s go out in the hall so Little Mermaid here can get some rest.”

John followed Greg out into the hallway. “Did you really need a statement?” he asked.

Lestrade smiled tiredly. “Nah, got most of the story from Sherlock and the tweedledee in custody will give it up as soon as we get a translator in there. Mostly, I wanted to tell you I’m glad you guys are back at it.”

“Couldn’t tell from the tongue lashing you gave us in there,” John said.

“Part of the game, is all. Sherlock needs something to push against, that’s the thing. You know, he really missed you when you were away. It almost seemed like he was back to...old times.” Lestrade’s eyes cut away from John’s, and John felt the hairs on the back of his neck prickle.

“Greg, if you have something to tell me, please, just say it straight.”

“I don’t, though,” Lestrade said, “not really.” He scrubbed a hand through his silver hair as he spoke. “I thought...I had a feeling, you know? He was nasty and snappish---I mean like he used to be, mate, you have no goddamn idea--and I had a feeling and it came to nothing, and he’s fine now, and I just wanted to...tell you,” he finished lamely. “I just thought you should know.”

John’s throat tightened, and a cold hollow opened in the pit of the stomach. 

He forced himself to smile and clap Greg on the back. “Thanks for telling me. I’m sure it’s all fine, but I appreciate it.”

“No worries. Hey, keep an eye on him, all right? He needs you, John. I know he’s an enormous bastard, and you should be able to enjoy being newly married without this on your shoulders, but he needs you. And we all need him.”

John nodded and tried to smile.

Lestrade clapped his shoulder and left, and John came back into the room, feigning a casualness he didn’t feel, hoping it would pass for concern in Sherlock’s weakened state.

Sherlock glanced up at him, and his focus seemed to sharpen for a second, then passed. He wrapped the blanket more tightly around his legs. John checked the IV solution bags as well as the insertion site on the back of Sherlock’s hand. He wished, fleetingly, to hold that hand, to thread his fingers in between Sherlock’s and hold it tightly.

“I want to go home, John,” Sherlock murmured. “Take me home.”

The words did funny things to a space right below John’s ribs.

“ _If_ you didn’t get nicked in the guts,” he replied, “and _if_ you didn’t aspirate any river water, then maybe they'll let you go home tomorrow night.”

“I’m fine. He barely grazed me.”

“Open wound. Thames River. You act like we’ve never done this before. Tell me, oh great and proper genius, about the various bacteria and parasites which flourish in urban rivers.”

Sherlock sighed but complied. “Coliform. Salmonella. Shigella. Cryptosporidium. Giardia. …”

“Which are all stupid, stupid ways to die. 24 hours of IV antibiotics, minimum, is your best case scenario here. Be grateful.”

Sherlock grimaced but didn’t argue.

“I’m going to call Mary down to sit with you and I’ll go round to the flat and collect a few things. I know hospital gowns are dreadful.”

Sherlock tried to scowl, but he was so tired it was merely a downward twist of his full lips. “Okay, fine. If I must. Can you get me another blanket? It’s freezing in here.”

John got Sherlock another blanket, smoothed it over his legs. Then he left, texting Mary about the change in plans.

Sherlock’s arms were smooth, the tiny indentations at the crook of the elbow years old and all but invisible to a casual observer. John still couldn’t shake the feeling of unease in his stomach, though, and he needed to find a few more answers before he could relax.

***

John sat in his darkened office at the clinic and powered up his computer.

He promised himself he’d never do this, and he never had. But right now, his need to know overrode his morals.

He entered his NHS credentials, and accessed Sherlock’s records.

***

Mary and Sherlock were both asleep. Her petite form was curled in the armchair, a hospital issue pillow under her head, swaddled in Sherlock’s extra blanket. Her hand was entwined with Sherlock’s.

John felt a momentary pang of--not jealousy, he could never be jealous, the two great loves of his life loved each other and how could that ever make him anything but happy--but a pang of something nonetheless, a sadness that they could express their affection openly and he was left out. That he had chosen to leave himself out.

John refocused his thoughts. Today had another agenda entirely.

He dropped the overnight bag at the foot of Sherlock’s bed, waking both of them. Mary stretched and gave him a sleepy smile. “Good morning, love.” 

“Good morning, sweetheart.” He smiled at Mary, then looked hard at Sherlock. Sherlock's eyes were open, in the way only Sherlock could go from asleep from awake in the space of a single heartbeat, watching, wary, clearly sensing danger.

John had been anxious coming over here, anxious about this conversation, anxious about where it would lead, but that anxiety ebbed away, leaving a deadly calm certainty.

“Mary, can you find the nurse and see if she can get Sherlock some ice water?” John said as he gave her A Look.

“John.” Sherlock’s voice sounded stronger than yesterday, more like himself. Mary and John both turned to him.

“Anything you have to say, you can say in front of Mary.”

“We’re a team,” Mary said. “What is it, John? Whatever it is, we can work it out together.”

John nodded, pulled a folded sheet from his back pocket. “Whenever a violent injury comes into A&E, a tox screen is standard procedure.”

Mary’s face drained of color. Sherlock gazed at him impassively, a visage of stone.

“I’m clean, John.”

“Negative for cocaine. But did you know that benzodiazepines take up to six weeks to clear the system?” He tossed the sheet of paper onto the bed. Sherlock didn’t even glance at it.

“You abused your position with the NHS to--”

“We are not anywhere near even in those terms and you know it, so shut up you!“ John spat.

Sherlock shut up.

John took a calming breath and continued.“I’ve been around you consistently for the past four weeks, and I know you’ve been clean in that time. To come up dirty for benzos after four-plus weeks means you were using pretty heavily before you stopped. I know you, Sherlock. You dislike tranquilizers immensely. You wouldn’t be using them unless you needed them for the comedown. From a stimulant.”

Tears brimmed in Mary’s eyes, spilled over. 

“Where were you shooting up, Sherlock? I can see your arms are clean, I know you don’t snort, so where are they?”

Sherlock stared at the blanket over his legs.

“Sherlock, give me the blanket.”

Sherlock didn’t move. “Fine, then,” said John, and he folded the blanket back, exposing Sherlock’s pale lower legs, lightly dusted with fine gingerish hair. Just below the inside of both knees, discolored bluish-purple indentations, healed over but still relatively fresh. 

John carefully folded the blanket back over Sherlock’s limbs. He felt stunned, numb, far away. His fingers smoothed the edge of the blanket, over and over.

_We should have taken him with us. He could have deduced the bandleader. We could have held each other under the stars._

Sherlock sat up, took John’s hand in his own, tentative. His pale fingers were cold.

“John. I know how this looks.”

“You don’t know anything. You’re an idiot,” John whispered, his eyes blurred with unshed tears.

“No, listen. I was lonely, I was selfish, and…” Sherlock inhaled raggedly. “I didn’t do it for attention, I didn’t do it to manipulate you. I just felt so bad, so lonely, and I wanted to get past it and be able to work. It was wrong and I stopped, you never would have known, I didn’t want you to know…”

Sherlock was close to babbling. John pinched the bridge of his nose to keep the tears from falling. “Stop. Just stop.”

Sherlock stopped.

“Coke?” John asked, the word dropping from numb lips.

“Pharmaceutical-grade, Mallinckrodt. Sealed vials.”

“Jesus.” John laughed without humor. “I don’t even want to know how you got your hands on that, or how much it cost.”

“No,” Sherlock agreed, “You don’t.”

“Clean needles?”

“New, sterile, every time,” Sherlock replied, an edge of defensiveness creeping into his voice-- _as if he had the right, how dare he_ \--”for goodness sake, John. I’m not a junkie.”

“Yes, you are,” John said, and then the tears did fall, damn them. “You are. I don’t care how much of a genius you are. The only difference between you and a John Doe in an alley is money and privilege. Where would you be, right now, today, without those two advantages?”

Sherlock seemed, for once, at a true loss for words. Mary cried silently, tears streaming down her face.

“Sherlock, I love you with the breadth and depth of my heart, but you are a junkie. I know you think you’re above that, that you’re better than that, but that thinking will bring you back here again and again. If you are ever going to be better than this, if you are ever going to put this behind you for good, you have to accept that godawful truth. You are a junkie.”

Sherlock kept his head bowed and didn’t answer, but he didn’t let go of John, either, and John fumbled blindly behind him for his wife’s hand, and they sat there like that, linked by their fingers, for several long minutes.

John took a deep breath, held it, exhaled.

Looked out over the abyss.

Measured the distance of the leap.

“Right, then,” said John. “You’re recovering from a knife wound, so this is tabled for now. But when we get you home, the three of us need to sit down and have a very fucking serious conversation. About a great many things.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock stared at the ceiling a moment longer, processing. His eyes slid down to meet John’s. Something almost like hope lurked there.
> 
> “Come upstairs with me,” said John.
> 
> “Why?” asked Sherlock.
> 
> “Because,” John said, “We’re going to set things right.”
> 
> ***
> 
> In which there is A Very Fucking Serious Conversation.
> 
> I'm planning on retooling this chapter at some point, but I'm putting it up because I have a vow of my own... I WILL finish this fic before His Last Vow ruins my life forever.
> 
> Next chapter is sex. Wall to wall sex. PROMISE. *Winks*

Sherlock ended up staying in hospital for three full days.

There was no WiFi.

“I’m bored, John,” he whinged. “Soooooooo bored. My brain is rotting.”

“Gee, I’m sorry,” said John. “Tell you what. Let’s go home right now, so you can get _necrotizing fucking fasciitis_ from an undiagnosed injury to your lower colon and then your guts will rot instead and then you’ll die. Does that sound, I don’t know, fucking _interesting_ enough for you?”

Sherlock did indeed perk up a bit at the idea of watching his own intestines rot, at which point John excused himself to the canteen for a cup of coffee and a sandwich, as punching hospital patients in the face was generally frowned upon by the National Health Service.

Mary, fortunately, was a bit more adept ar handling a cranky and bored but still incapacitated Sherlock, petting him, humoring him, indulging his childish side with board games and fizzy lemonade and DVDs of terrible reality shows.

John marveled at them for the hundredth time, as the two practically cuddled on the hospital bed, Mary snuggled against Sherlock’s uninjured side, laptop on the tray table. 

Mary had ability to reach the parts of Sherlock that he couldn’t, to see sides of him that were invisible to John. The three of them seemed to bring out the best in each other, making each other more well-rounded and whole than they could ever be separately. And that made John happy.

Even if, at the moment, he felt just a little left out.

“What are you watching?” he asked.

“ _Geordie Shore_ ,” Mary replied. “Bring the chair over and join us.”

Sometimes left out was fine. “Nope, good over here,” declared John, picking up his novel.

Later on, John looked up from his book to find that both Mary and Sherlock were napping. He watched them sleep curled up against each other, and marveled a bit at the improbability of his attraction to each of them. Mary was all softness and curves and sunlight, while Sherlock was all angles and cool planes and shadows--

Except of course, for the parts of him that were improbably soft, his dark hair and full lips and the amazing lush curve of his arse in tailored trousers. John had always thought about these things, in a secluded, closed off corner of his mind, but ever since that night on the island he had gradually, tentatively allowed himself the luxury of true consideration, of bringing these thoughts out into daylight, of giving himself permission to truly feel and acknowledge his attraction to Sherlock. It was amazing, and liberating, and yes, arousing. John was aroused by him, even now, in a hospital gown, needing a shower, snoring--

Wait. Was Sherlock drooling, just a bit ? Okay, John amended, maybe not so arousing right this second. He laughed to himself, a soft chuckle, and Sherlock woke. He opened a sleepy eye at John.

“You find something funny,” he murmured in his rumbling baritone. 

_Sleepy growl? Definitely arousing. Almost makes up for the drool_.

“You two,” John said. “Knackered out like little kids.”

“I’m not tired, John. I’m bored. I’m so bored it makes me--”

Sherlock yawned, hugely. Something warm and tender flared in John’s chest.

“Okay, then,” John said, agreeably. “You’re not tired. Go back to sleep.”

Sherlock went back to sleep.

***

John and Mary got Sherlock settled into his armchair at Baker Street while Mrs. Hudson fluttered about, pouring tea and fluffing pillows and just generally making a fuss. She hugged Mary and kissed John on the cheek.

“I’m so happy you’re back, dear,” she told John. “He’s missed you so much, you have no idea, the moods and the experiments and the _smoking_ \--”

“No, Mrs. Hudson, we’re just here for a few days, until Sherlock’s back on his feet, you see.”

Mrs. Hudson beamed at him as if he hadn’t said anything. “I aired out the second bedroom and put fresh sheets on the bed. If you’ll be needing a second bed. Sherlock’s will hold three easily, I’m sure.”

Mary hid a smile behind her hand.

“Mrs Hudson!” John gasped, scandalized. 

“Oh love, don’t mind me, I’m just teasing,” she cooed, patting John’s cheek as she left the room.

John could have sworn the older lady gave Mary a wink as she passed.

After Mrs. Hudson left, the mood between the three grew tense and anticipatory. Mary was crabby, Sherlock was jumpy, and John knew no one had forgotten his declaration in the hospital. The prospect of difficult, emotionally draining conversation hung over their heads like a fog. After a few moments of uncomfortable silence, Mary went into the kitchen to assess the fridge situation.

Sherlock cleared his throat. “Ah, John,” he said, overly polite. “Could you bring me my laptop, please?”

Yep, Sherlock was nervous as anything.

John brought Sherlock his laptop, and Sherlock busied himself with catching up on email while John laid a fire in the hearth. After ten minutes, Mary poked her head into the sitting room.

“There’s nothing in the fridge but an onion, something in plastic wrap that’s either a meatloaf or possibly a pancreas, and a Cadbury Flake.”

“Mary,” said Sherlock urgently. “Don’t eat the Cadbury Flake.”

“Oh, God, what’s in it?” Mary asked. “Is it a fast death, at least?”

“Nothing like that,” Sherlock said. “It’s just my last one. I wanted it.”

One chocolate bar was not going to feed the three of them, so John rang for takeaway.

***

Sherlock came to the kitchen table when asked, though with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Mary and John plowed through an order of chicken pad thai while Sherlock poked listlessly at his plate.

“Sherlock, you’re healing,” John said. “Eat something.”

Sherlock scowled at his plate like it had offended him personally.

“Does the kitchen chair bother your side, love?” Mary asked.

“I am _fine_ , Mary,” said Sherlock peevishly. “Honestly, you two are coddling me like an invalid and I find it tiresome. You really can leave at any time.”

“Not until we talk,” John said with a calmness he didn’t feel.

Sherlock laid down his chopsticks and looked up at him. “John.”

“Yes, Sherlock?”

“I know you plan on us having a, quote unquote, ‘conversation’ tonight. Frankly I find the idea tedious in the extreme, but if you must, please go ahead and say what you have planned I can spend the rest of my evening in peace.”

John regarded Sherlock, chewed, swallowed. 

“No.”

Sherlock quirked an eyebrow.

“No.” John pointed at Sherlock with his chopsticks. “You do not get to control this conversation, so stop trying. We eat first, then we talk. Have a spring roll. You like those.”

John placed a spring roll on Sherlock’s plate. Sherlock ate it, glaring through narrowed eyes at John as he chewed aggressively.

 _Only Sherlock could chew that aggressively_ , thought John, but he held his tongue.

After dinner, Sherlock drifted silently into the sitting room. Mary made tea as John tidied. She poured a cup for John and left it on the kitchen table. 

“Thank you, sweetheart.” He kissed her temple. Mary looked at him then, and he saw the anxiety in her eyes.

 _I’m the cause of that,_ he thought, and felt a pang of guilt and sadness. _My inability to say what I mean, what I want. No more of this. It ends tonight._

“John,” she said. “Do you know what you’re going to say?”

He let go a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding. “No. But I know that no matter what, I love you. Do you believe that?”

“Yes. Of course I do.” she put her arms around her neck and kissed him on the mouth. “I Iove you too. Do you know that?”

“Yes,” he said. “I truly do.” He kissed her back. “Go take Himself his tea, then, and I’ll be out in a moment.”

Mary took Sherlock his tea, and after a moment John placed his palms flat on the kitchen table and took a deep, steadying breath. He honestly had no idea what he planned to say. He just knew that somehow he had to hack his way through this bramble of miscommunication and misunderstanding and complicated feelings and come out on the other side, scratched and bloodied perhaps, but at least then he’d know. He’d know where he and Sherlock and Mary stood with each other.

 _God, all these feelings._ John hung his head, felt himself breathe in and out.

_Feelings are just the worst._

***

John took his time, but eventually came into the sitting room. Mary was curled up on the sofa, while Sherlock gazed absently into the fire. John took his chair opposite Sherlock. Inhaled. Found his courage.

A fragment of Shakespeare floated into his mind. _Screw your courage to the sticking point, and we’ll not fail._

This is what a sticking point felt like, he supposed.

“Sherlock.”

Sherlock turned his head to gaze at him, level, remote. “Yes, John.”

“We need to--” John faltered, swallowed. “We need to talk about some things.”

“If you insist.”

“I do."

"Then by all means."

"This--this is hard," John said, faltering a bit. "I know…you said you were lonely. In the hospital. How did I miss that? How did I miss that you felt so lonely that you needed to…” John trailed off.

“Take drugs,” Sherlock supplied flatly.

“‘Yeah. Take drugs. How did I miss that? What aren’t you telling me? What do I not understand?”

“Sharing is overrated, John. Let’s not do this.” The stone facade was crumbling; there was a poorly-concealed note of pleading in Sherlock’s voice. John leaned forward, searching the other man’s eyes for cues on how to proceed.

“Sherlock. You know what you mean to me. You know I love you. Why can’t you talk about this with me?”

Sherlock closed his eyes. The silence stretched between them, thick and oppressing.

“In battle,” John said, “sometimes, when things get difficult, there’s a saying. The only way out is through. That’s where we are now, Sherlock. The only way out is through.”

Sherlock stared into the fire, unmoving, unseeing.

John waited. Waited some more. Let the moment spool out between them. Resisted the temptation to fill the space. 

Sherlock’s voice, when it came, was a choked whisper. “You don’t,” he said. “You say you do, but you don’t. _You don’t._ ”

Sherlock flinched, closed his eyes as if he were in physical pain. 

“Tell me,” John pleaded. “Help me understand. You know I don’t see the things that you see, and I can’t fix this if I don’t understand.”

“Ahh, John,” Sherlock breathed. "As ever. You do see, but you do not observe.” He took a deep breath. “You do not observe that I…” his shoulders sagged.

“Mary,” Sherlock whispered.

She gazed at him, eyes bright with tears.“Yes, dearest.”

“Help me. Please.” Sherlock turned towards her, pleading with his eyes. _Help me with what I cannot say._

Mary got up and crossed the room to where Sherlock sat. She sat on the floor, next to his chair, put her hand on his leg. 

“Sherlock,” she whispered. “Close your eyes.” He complied, his shoulders sagging. He leaned forward and covered his face with his hands.

“Sherlock,” she murmured softly. “if I ask you questions, can you shake your head yes or no?”

His dark curls bobbed up minutely.

“Sherlock...do you have feelings for John?”

His head was still for several long moments. Then he moved his head, a fraction of an inch, up then down.

“Are you in love with John?”

A minute passed, then he nodded, the most minute fraction of movement.

John felt dizzy. _My God_. Sudden understanding lit up the corners of his mind. So many things made sense now. How had he not seen it? How had he been so blind?

It was everything he wanted to hear, but the enormity of what Sherlock had put out there made John feel lightheaded, almost nauseated from the sheer weight of it. _Good Lord_ , John thought. _What do I do with this knowledge?_

Then another thought. _He’s been carrying this around and it’s been crushing him. He hasn’t been himself for months and now, finally, I know why._

_I’m so sorry._

“Okay, Sherlock.” Mary rubbed soothing circles on his leg. “It’s all done. The worst is over. It’s out. It’s done.”

He shook his head. _No._

Mary looked at his dark head in confusion.

Sherlock muttered something into his hands.

“I can’t understand you, love.”

He picked up his head then, his eyes wet with unshed tears. He looked at John, then at Mary.

“I have two goldfish,” he said miserably.

Mary looked at him in confusion.

John looked at Mary, then at Sherlock. 

_Two goldfish. I have two goldfish._

If John was Sherlock’s friend, his only friend for so long, the only one he allowed close, and then Mary...

“Mary, too?” he asked.

Sherlock nodded.

John slumped into in his chair, digesting this new piece of information. Mary sat back on her heels, utterly dazed. Sherlock, past the worst of the emotional logjam, wiped his eyes on his sleeve, straightened his spine and returned his gaze to the fire.

John’s brain was spinning as he parsed this new information. Mary had asked Sherlock the right questions. Mary had known.

“Sherlock,” he said slowly, “Did Mary guess about … how you felt about me? Or did she know?”

“She knew,” he said, his voice slightly shaky. “Or, more accurately, she deduced. The fifth night after we met.”

“And when did you discover how you felt about her?”

John saw Sherlock’s wheels turning as he came to some kind of a decision. Saw him decide to lie. Saw him decide to tell the truth.

“The third time I kissed her.”

John didn’t understand the words at first. Then they hit him, with the force of a blow.

“What. What--Holy _fuck_ , Sherlock.”

“The first time was November 8. The second December 19. The third was April 23.”

John felt dazed, drugged. _This isn’t happening_ , he thought. _This isn’t real_. He fought against the fog in his brain.

Did you...did you put your hands on her?” he rasped.

“Yes.” The single, terse word filled the room. Mary sat curled within herself, eyes wide, still as a stone. There was no air left to fill John’s lungs.

“Why, Sherlock?” he breathed. “For the love of God, _why?_ ”

Something in Sherlock broke, then, his face twisting as he spoke. “You, John. Because of you.”

“I don’t understand--”

“Because she smelled like you, and she tasted like you and I wanted you, and I couldn’t have you,” said Sherlock in hollow, broken voice. “And then I got closer to Mary, and I started to want her, too. So we didn’t. Because you weren’t a part of it. And that was wrong.”

John let out a disbelieving bark of laughter. “That was wrong? _That was wrong?_ My God, Sherlock, that was five hundred miles past the point of wrong.” John’s hand scrubbed at the base of his neck and his eyes dropped to the ground. The silence lay between them like mustard gas. Like poison.

“I have to know one more thing,” John said.

When he raised his eyes and spoke again, his voice was low, dangerous, lethal.

“Sherlock, did you sleep with my wife behind my back?”

“No,” Sherlock said truthfully. “No. John. I’ve never...I’ve...I’ve never done that with anyone.”

John exhaled, and relaxed just the barest fraction. “Right. Well, good. That’s good, I guess.” 

“John,” Sherlock said. “It was all my instigation. Mary didn’t...it was all me.”

“But I bet she enjoyed it. Didn’t you, love?”

Mary looked down at the ground, unable to speak, silently confirming the truth of his words.

“Well, I certainly would have, in your place,” John said tightly.

“John,” Sherlock said, his voice low, “you have to understand. It was you that I wanted. I--”

“If you say you were thinking of me the whole time, I’ll be sick,” John said.

“But I was,” Sherlock said. “I was.”

John, past thinking, operating on pure instinct, slid down on his knees in front of Sherlock’s chair. He put his hand alongside Sherlock’s face, cupping his jaw, gazing into the fathomless depths of his eyes. God, how he loved him. How he loved them both. His heart twisted. 

“I could have lied, John.” Sherlock whispered. “You wanted the truth, and I don’t want to lie to you ever again. And I am sorry."

“You could have just told me how you felt,” John said, soft words full of venom. “You stupid, stupid man. You could have just told me. I would have given you anything, anything you ever wanted. Because, the way you want me to feel? Yeah. I do. I really, really do.

“But instead of telling the truth...instead you take drugs, you touch my wife, you create this great swath of...of wreckage in your wake.” He laughed bitterly, mirthlessly. “But that’s the Sherlock Holmes way, isn’t it?”

John stood abruptly, turned, and left the flat, slamming the door, leaving Sherlock and Mary sitting still as statues in the firelight.

***

John didn’t go back to Baker Street that night. Instead he went home, laid alone in his double bed, dry eyed and silent.

He tried to visualise it, Sherlock kissing Mary, his hands on her body. It didn’t make him jealous or angry. It made him confused and sad.

He lay awake until dawn rose damp and grey.

Mary texted him, then Sherlock. John ignored the messages and turned off his phone.

He went to work, and barely remembered being there after.

He went to Hampstead Heath after work and walked for miles, his feet carrying him where they wished while he sorted out his thoughts.

John’s feet were sore and he was dying of thirst when, in a flash of insight, he came to understand his most important decision:

_I can try to understand, forgive them and have them both. Or I can hang on to my hurt and be alone._

Well, the answer to that was easy enough, wasn’t it?

***

John let himself in with his key and ascended the steps carefully.

Sherlock was lying on the sofa, wearing a dressing gown and pyjama bottoms, hair damp from a recent shower. For some reason John’s heart clenched at the sight of Sherlock’s pale, vulnerable toes.

He hung up his coat, took a deep breath. “Sherlock.”

“John.” Sherlock spoke to the ceiling. “You’ve been walking the Heath. Thinking.”

“Well, yes.”

“Mary is upstairs. I presume you’ve come to gather your wife and leave. I promise I shall not attempt any further contact with you.”

“Sherlock.”

“Alternately, if you find you can’t forgive Mary, then of course I will make sure she is--”

“Sherlock. Shut up. None of that is going to happen. I’m not leaving anybody.”

“That is a relief, though I never thought you would be one to desert a pregnant spouse, no matter the indiscretion--”

“Jesus, Sherlock, you never listen. I said I’m not leaving anybody.”

Sherlock stared at the ceiling a moment longer, processing. His eyes slid down to meet John’s. Something almost like hope lurked there.

“Come upstairs with me,” said John.

“Why?” asked Sherlock.

“Because,” John said, “We’re going to set things right.”

***

Mary was not asleep. She was curled on her side, wide awake, when John entered the room with Sherlock at his heels. 

“John!” she exclaimed, sitting up. Her eyes were pink from crying. “John, God, when you turned off your phone I thought--”

“Shh, love. It’s all right.” He knelt down and kissed her gently, and her eyes brimmed over again with tears. “No, don’t cry, baby, everything’s ok.” His arm around his wife, John fished a tissue from the bedside box and handed it to her, who dabbed her eyes and blew her nose. She gave him a watery smile as he took the tissue from her and tossed it in the bin. 

“Budge over, Mrs. Watson.” She did so, and John sat down next to her on the bed.

Sherlock lurked uncertainly in the doorway, looking ready to bolt at any moment. 

“Stop looming, Sherlock. Shut the door then come sit down here with us,” John said, patting the space on the bed in front of him. Sherlock complied, still looking unsure as he joined them on the double bed.

 _Mrs. Hudson’s right_ , John thought, and had to tamp down a wild giggle. _Sherlock’s bed would be a better fit for three._

 _Fuck it. We’ll buy a new bed._

“I’ve been thinking,” John announced, perhaps a bit unnecessarily, ”and I have a few things to say,” 

Mary and Sherlock both looked at him expectantly.

“First of all, I’m not a bit angry with you, love,” he said touching Mary’s face. “I was, at first, yes. But then I realized something important. I’ve never said no to Sherlock ever, not once in my life, to anything he’s ever wanted...and to have a different expectation for you is completely unfair, isn’t it? Just fair warning, though. Sherlock is the exception to every rule, I know that. But no one else is. Anyone who is not in this room right now is off limits forevermore. Understood?”

Mary’s eyes widened in understanding. “Yes, John,” she said simply, her voice a bit shaky. 

“Good girl,” John said kindly, patting her hand.

“And you,” John said, looking at Sherlock. “What you did was really, really beyond the pale. Also, super creepy. And I need you to understand it's not that you were with Mary, OK? It was the dishonesty. Do you get that?"

Sherlock nodded.

"But I’ve thought about it, a lot," John continued. "I know you get signals crossed and wires confused, especially with emotions and boundaries, and I understand that I don’t understand how your brain works three-quarters of the time, and I see how you thought it was about me and didn’t see the wrong in it at the time. It’s all very fucked up, but I get it, which says something very fucked up about me too. So. We’re mostly ok.”

Sherlock cocked his head at John. “Mostly?” He echoed.

“Mostly. We just need to even the score.”

Sherlock narrowed his eyes. “I don’t follow.”

John closed his eyes.

The fear wasn’t about the falling. Falling’s like flying, isn’t it?

The destination is what mattered. His destination was Sherlock.

And above all else, he believed, eternally, in Sherlock Holmes.

So he took a breath. He jumped.

John Watson opened his eyes and smiled.

“Three kisses, Sherlock. That’s what you owe me.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John looked up then, and smiled at her. “Is everything all right, love?”
> 
> Mary clapped her hands like a child on Christmas morning. “Everything,” she breathed, “is bloody _brilliant_.”
> 
>  
> 
> ***
> 
> Basically, wall to wall sex.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this story is over.
> 
> There may be an epilogue, if there is popular demand and just the right inspiration strikes.
> 
> Thewhiphand23, you are the reason this story exists. You are my muse. Never ever stop being amazing.
> 
> This is the violin piece Sherlock played:
> 
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HZZe1ayMdU
> 
> See y'all on the other side.

A buzzing white noise filled Sherlock’s brain.

_I’m having a stroke. Possibly an aneurysm. John Watson asked me to kiss him, and I’m going to die before I have a chance. How very unfortunate._

Then the noise receded somewhat, and his mind cleared enough to see both John and Mary looking at him expectantly.

“Come on, then,” said John. “Time to pay up. Three kisses, and then you’ll be forgiven.”

“So. You expect me, to, um…” his hand flapped, ridiculously, in the general direction of John’s mouth.

His limbs felt numb, heavy, distant. _Definitely a stroke._

“I do expect you to. I can wait here all night, if you like.” John was smiling. He didn’t seem angry. Was he still angry? Sherlock’s ability to process emotions, a bit stunted under the best of circumstances, was completely overloaded after the exhausting emotional journey of the past twenty four hours.

John was still looking at him. Waiting. When in doubt about feelings, Sherlock remembered, John wanted him to ask.

“Are you still angry?” Sherlock asked.

“Nope. Just waiting for what you owe me, and then we’ll be right as rain.” 

Feeling incredibly foolish and very, very scared, Sherlock leaned towards John and brushed their lips together. Featherlight, dry, chaste. Over immediately. Sherlock pulled away and John rolled his eyes at him.

“Really, Sherlock. _That’s_ how you snogged my wife.”

Sherlock kissed him again, a bit more pressure against John’s lips, and waited a moment longer before pulling away.

“Hm,” said John, “slight improvement. Last one, then. Last chance to get it right.”

And John, the bastard. John _smirked_ at at him, the cockiest I Am Captain John Fucking Watson smirk given in recorded history.

Like he thought Sherlock Holmes didn’t know how to snog someone properly. 

Annoyed, flustered and constitutonally unable to back down from a challenge, Sherlock huffed in irritation, cupped his hands around John’s head and kissed him thoroughly. 

John, caught unawares, made a small ‘oof’ of surprise. 

A moment passed. Another. 

Then, something _shifted._

Tinder caught. Flames spread. John relaxed, gave himself up to the kiss, his mouth opening to Sherlock, warm hands coming up to tangle themselves in his hair. Wet tongues met, collided, slid against each other. John gave a tiny, breathy moan into Sherlock’s mouth as their kisses grew wetter, grew more heated and desperate. 

John Watson, Sherlock discovered, was _amazing_ at this. 

Sherlock kissed him over and over again, kissed him as if his life depended upon it. Maybe it did. Maybe kissing John Watson was all the heat and light in the universe coalesced into one infinitely hot, wet, willing mouth. He tasted of sunlight and oxygen and every single good thing that had ever happened in Sherlock Holmes’ not-so-good life. He tasted like snowflakes and wine gums and rooftop chases and adrenaline and the perfect perfect locked room mystery opening up before Sherlock’s eyes. 

John broke away, then, making Sherlock moan a little at the loss of his mouth, to slide his heated lips along edge of Sherlock’s freshly-shaven jaw, as his strong hands fisted in his dressing gown and pulled Sherlock closer. His tongue darted out to lick his neck, to taste the place under his ear, and Sherlock heard odd gasping breathy sounds and he was the one making them, wasn’t he, and then John found the juncture where his neck met his shoulder and bit down gently, and that was _brilliant_ , the pleasure mixed with just the slightest bit of pain, and Sherlock’s eyes flew open in surprise and he saw Mary staring at them, wide eyed. 

He pulled away from John then, momentarily panicked. John was Mary’s husband, and oh God, he had been snogging John half to death in front of Mary... 

John looked up then, and smiled at her. “Is everything all right, love?” 

Mary clapped her hands like a child on Christmas morning. “Everything,” she breathed, “is bloody _brilliant_.” 

“Come here, then,” said John, and he kissed her, and then Sherlock kissed her while John nibbled on his neck, her lips softer and smoother but no less sweet, and he found that Mary tasted amazing, too. 

After a few more lovely moments of snogging (and Sherlock Holmes had disdained snogging his whole life, thought it messy and unhygienic and embarrassing and ridiculous, and it was all those things but also brilliant, and Sherlock wondered how something as ridiculous as mashing faces together could make him feel like this, fizzy and light and incandescent all at once) Sherlock pulled away, a bit, and John stopped, looked at him, saw the want in his eyes. 

“Sherlock,” John said, stroking his fingertips across Sherlock’s cheekbone. “What do you want? Tell us.” 

His head swam with visions and desires and sandalwood memories. 

“Everything,” he breathed out. “I want every single thing.” 

John kissed his forehead, and stroked his hair. “I love that you want us that much, I do, but you’re still recovering from a knife wound, so maybe we should ratchet that down just a couple of notches for tonight, okay?” 

Sherlock nodded. What he really needed most right now was quite simple. “I need you to touch me,” he said softly. 

“Oh, darling man,” Mary breathed into his ear. “We’ve been dying to.” 

John slid the dressing gown from Sherlock’s shoulders while Mary kissed him, then claimed Sherlock’s mouth with his own while Mary shed her t-shirt and yoga pants. Standing at the edge of the bed, John stopped making out with Sherlock to watch Mary wiggle out of her knickers and sports bra, a slight curve showing now in her belly. She pulled her bra over her head and her breasts popped free, much larger now, nipples dusky pink and erect 

“God, you’re gorgeous,” John breathed. “Look at her, Sherlock. Isn’t she?” 

And she was. Sherlock had only ever been attracted to one other woman in his life, and he had never found Irene beautiful. Brilliant, ruthless and sexually voracious, yes, but not beautiful. Mary was beautiful, though, and her pregnancy only accentuated what was beautiful about her, her lushness and curves and soft glow. 

Sherlock had a sudden flash of understanding. If he was gay, and yet he could fall in love with one extraordinary person of the opposite sex and find her beautiful, then that meant that John could be straight and fall in love with one man and find… 

Sherlock gazed at John, at a loss for words. This time, though, John was the one who did the mind-reading trick and smiled. “Yes, Sherlock, that’s it _exactly_ ,” he said, kissing his temple chastely.

Sherlock marveled for a moment at how lucky he was to find them, before remembering he didn’t believe in such things as luck.

Mary slipped into bed --”no, don’t roll over love, you’re still hurt--” and perched on her knees behind Sherlock, She curled herself around him to taste the planes of his stomach, lick the curve of his hip, as her fingers found his cock where it strained insistently against his bottoms. He inhaled sharply, seeing stars as she stroked him through the cotton material.

“I want to see all of you, Sherlock,” she whispered. “Can I?”

“Yes, oh God, yes,” he breathed, and John’s mouth found his again, tongues dancing and meeting, as Mary’s small warm hands untied the tapes of his pyjama bottoms and worked them down his hips. He raised himself up off the bed so she could remove them completely.

“Oh my goodness,” Mary sighed. “Just look at you, darling. You’re gorgeous.”

John broke the kiss and pulled back a fraction to look Sherlock up and down as Sherlock, suddenly horribly self-conscious, shut his eyes under the weight of two heated gazes.

“God, Sherlock,” John said in a choked whisper. “You’re amazing.”

Sherlock opened one eye and looked down his body with curiosity. His cock was hard and flushed dark pink, almost purple at the glans, uncut, 2.3 centimeters above the NHS-determined average length for UK males, average in girth, with a three-degree leftward curve. His body was pale and gangly, sparse of body hair, dotted with scars, dusted liberally with moles and freckles. His belly was concave, his hipbones prominent. He could glimpse the taped edge of the fresh bandage over his wound on his left side, all around it a splotch of jaundiced-looking yellow where the Betadine stain had not yet washed away. All in all, he thought, he looked just the same as he had when he had stepped out of the shower earlier today: thoroughly unremarkable.

“Really?” He heard himself say, and he cringed inside at how childish and vulnerable and needy he sounded.

“Really,” said John, and kissed him deeply. “Really and truly beautiful and perfect.”

Sherlock reached for John, ran his fingers through soft sandy hair, and was suddenly seized by a burning, immediate need to see John Watson naked.

“You’re still dressed, John,” Sherlock pointed out.

“He’s right, sweetie,” Mary piped up. “You’ve still got your kit on and frankly, it’s a bit rude.”

John stood up at the edge of the bed and stripped off his clothes with precise, economical movements. Sherlock had seen him naked before, in bits and pieces, out of the shower or scratching his belly, but seeing him bared like this was a whole new revelation. He gazed in frank wonder at John’s arms, still tanned from the honeymoon, the color ending above his elbows because John never took off his T-shirt in public; the definition of his deltoids; the pale spiderweb of the scar on his shoulder; the scatter of blonde hair across his chest; his nipples, small and light brown.

John locked eyes with Sherlock when his hands undid the button of his jeans; then he stepped out of them and stripped off his pants, and he was naked and utterly beautiful. His hard cock matched the rest of him, a bit shorter and thicker than Sherlock’s, uncut and curving upward just a bit, and Sherlock felt the pure lust spiral through him at the sight.

Mary leaned her head on Sherlock’s shoulder and sighed. “He’s pretty damn gorgeous himself, don’t you think?” 

“You’re a revelation, John,” Sherlock murmured. 

John smiled and slid into bed next to Sherlock, kissing him. He traced his fingers along Sherlock’s chest, stopping to rub his thumb over a nipple, watching the flesh harden and pebble, following it with his tongue. Mary ran her fingertips lightly over the muscles of his inner thighs, and Sherlock closed his eyes and gave himself over to the sensation.

John touched and tongued at him for several minutes then pulled away, looking sheepish. “Sherlock I--I’ve never been with a man before. I’m nervous. I’ve no idea what I’m doing.”

“Neither have I,” admitted Sherlock, “so.”

They looked at each other, and the enormity and ridiculousness of the situation they found themselves in overcame them, and they both began to giggle. 

“Boys,” said Mary.

“We shouldn’t giggle,” John said, breathless. “No giggling at a three-way.”

Mary started to giggle also. The giggling turned into full-blown laughter, and Sherlock was amazed by how good it felt to laugh while naked in bed with people you loved.

When the fit subsided, Mary waved her hand like a schoolgirl in maths.

“Yes, darling?” said John.

“Neither one of you have been with a man, true,” she said. “But, um. I have.”

***

They treated Sherlock with a reverence that made his heart ache.

Mary laid him on his right side to keep pressure off the healing wound, while John spooned up behind him, kissing his spine, his shoulder blade, the curls at the base of his neck. Mary dug a bottle of sweet almond oil out of her overnight bag (for stretch marks, though that ship had sailed and this use was far more practical) and she showed John how to slick his hand and curve around and grip Sherlock’s cock, almost like he was stroking himself.

“I want you so very, very badly,” John murmured as he settled behind him, lips against Sherlock’s shoulder, his erection hot and hard against his hip. “Do you want me to touch you?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said, the words a soft exhale. “God, yes, touch me.”

Sherlock was impossibly hard already, and when John’s hand wrapped around him and squeezed, his back arched with the electric surge of pleasure that traveled his body.

John stroked him over and over, gently at first, then more firmly, more insistent, making Sherlock gasp and moan, heedless of the noises he made. “Please,” he begged. “Yes, please, it’s so good. Don’t stop.” His rational thought fell away as his hips moved in time to John’s strokes, seeking friction, his body giving in to the mindless animal need to thrust.

Mary lay on her side facing him, stroking his hair, his face. “Gorgeous,” she whispered, “You’re so gorgeous, the two of you. I wish you could see how you look right now.” She kissed him, wet and open mouthed, and Sherlock moaned into the kiss, his hand finding her breast and pulling at her tender nipple, moving down to the warm slope of her belly. He brought his hand around to slip in between her thighs, but the stopped him gently.

“This is for you,” she murmured. “Focus on yourself. We want to make you feel good.”

Sherlock nodded, and slid his hand around her rear to squeeze the plush curve of her arse, feeling her warmth and softness under his fingers.

John mouthed against his neck, traced the curve of his ear. ”Show me, Sherlock,” John whispered. “Show me how you like it. Show me how to make you come.”

Sherlock wrapped his hand around John’s and tightened his grip, shortened the strokes, as the slow liquid metal of pleasure poured through him, pooling fire in his belly. Mary licked across his chest, a warm wet mouth closing around one nipple and sucking, gently at first then harder. She slid her fingers along his thigh and reached under to cup his balls as John stroked him.

“Oh, fuck, yes,” he moaned, her fingers throwing even more fuel on the fire of impossible pleasure John was wringing out of his body, and he felt the tightening behind his balls as his body wound in upon himself and he was close already, so close, and he ached to climax and yet he wanted it to never ever end, and his John and his Mary were with him, loving him, and--

”Come for us, Sherlock,” John whispered in his ear, and he did, crying out in mindless endless pleasure as he spilled over their joined hands and the curve of Mary’s belly, again and again, showers of electric sparking bliss, as his lovers kept him safe, guided him through to the other side, holding him until the aftershocks subsided and he came back to himself, panting, sweaty, drained, content. 

***

Mary soothed and gentled Sherlock, whispering nonsense words of affection in his ear as John went into the bathroom and fetched a wet flannel to clean them off. He wiped Mary’’s belly tenderly, then Sherlock, then tossed it to the floor as he slid in on the other side of Mary.

“You all right, Sherlock?” John said stroking his hair.

“Mmm,” said Sherlock, unable to make the effort of forming words.

“I’m going to see to my wife,” John said. "You join in when you feel like it, okay?”

“Mmm,” said Sherlock.

Mary kissed him on his sweaty forehead, and rolled over to kiss John. Sherlock watched them drowsily as their mouths met, at first lazy and languorous but quickly growing heated. John pulled Mary on top of him, and his lips moved from her mouth to her breasts, suckling first one then the other. Mary shut her eyes and whimpered.

John broke the suction, and Mary moved herself down John’s body, raising herself up to guide his cock into her. Sherlock’s interest sharpened at John’s deep, satisfied sigh as he sheathed himself in Mary, his hands on her hips, controlling her movements as she rode his cock, raising her up, almost all the way off him then pulling her down to bury himself deep within her.

Sherlock watched them, wondering what it felt like, what Mary’s heat and tightness would feel like wrapped around his cock, wondering what John’s hardness would feel like deep inside of him.

 _I’ll get to find out_ , he thought. _Soon. And often_. He felt himself twitch and thicken at the thought, although he’d just come not ten minutes earlier.

“Look at him, John,” Mary said. “Absolutely wrecked. Defiled. We did that to him.”

John turned his head then, looking at him, and Sherlock felt rather than saw the enormous lust in the man’s eyes. John growled, just once, low in his throat, and reached for him, pulling him into a desperate kiss, the soreness of Sherlock’s abused lips making it all the more electrifying. John’s tongue plundered his mouth as Mary rode him harder, the wet sliding noises of bodies and mouths filling the room.

Mary reached a hand in between her legs, seeking the extra friction she needed. John caught her hand and broke the kiss.

“Sherlock,” he asked, “Would you like to help Mary?”

Sherlock nodded.

“Your side feels alright?” Mary asked, ever the caretaker.

Sherlock nodded.

“Get behind me, then,” Mary said, and Sherlock straddled John’s legs, slotting himself behind Mary as she fucked her husband. She stilled for a moment, reaching behind to pull Sherlock close, his hardening cock pushing up against her soft backside. He found her breast with one hand and his other slipped between her legs and found her clit. 

She inhaled raggedly. “Oh, that’s it. Yes, love. Perfect.” Sherlock stroked her as she fucked herself on John’s cock, and all three of them breathed and sighed together as one for several long minutes as they sought their pleasure in each other.

The silence was broken by Mary’s whimper. “I’m so close. John, don’t come yet, I’m so close.”

Sherlock could feel the tension in her body rising, rising, and then she broke with a guttural cry, grinding hard into his fingers as the spasms tore through her. Her wave began to ebb, and she sagged a little bit in his arms. John slowed his thrusts.

“Ease off just a bit,” John told him, “She gets sensitive right after, but she can come again, can’t you, love? Come again for us.”

“Yes,” Mary moaned. “Oh. Yes.” She began to move again, rolling her hips, and Sherlock touched her, circling gently.

“You’re so good at this, Sherlock,” she panted. “How are you so good. You’re a prodigy, you’re like Mozart--Oh, darling, yes, more, please, just a little more--” and Sherlock sped his fingers, pressing a little harder, and she came again, sighing, almost sobbing, and he stroked her gently just a few times more and withdrew his fingers, wrapping his arms around her, kissing her neck.

“Amazing,” Mary sighed. “You’re both amazing. Unreal. John, darling, don’t come yet.” She turned her face and kissed Sherlock gently.

“Would you like to suck him?” she asked Sherlock.

“Yes,” he said.

“You don’t know how, do you?”

Sherlock buried his face into her hair, suddenly feeling vulnerable. He shook his head.

“No, darling, don’t hide, that’s amazing, that’s so hot it’s unbelievable,” Mary said. “Would you like me to show you?”

“Yes,” Sherlock said. “Yes, please. I would like that.”

***

John laid on his back, legs spread, cock stiff and wet with Mary’s juices, eyes closed. He was smiling. Mary knelt between his knees.

“Like the King of Siam, you are,” Mary said with a smile. She kissed his chest, licked her way down the flesh of his belly. She placed her hands on the inside of John’s thighs, spreading them wide as she licked into the crease of his groin, taking his cock in her hand, running her tongue across his softly furred balls. John shifted and huffed out a breath.

“You like that?” Mary asked.

“I like every single thing you do,” John declared fervently.

Mary smiled at Sherlock. “Make sure your lips cover your teeth, keep your jaw and throat relaxed. You can take him all the way in if you want, but you can use your hand around the base to give yourself a rest.” She brought herself up and wrapped her lips around John’s cock, taking him in deep, sliding back and taking him again, then using her hand against the base of his length, working it in concert with her mouth, making John moan. A few more strokes and she pulled off, licking the length of him, tracing the veins on the underside with her pink, wet tongue.

Sherlock was spellbound. The sight of her mouth against John’s hard flesh, sliding wet with her juices, was without a doubt the single most erotic thing he had ever seen. His cock sprang into life, growing fully erect and stiff against his belly.

She turned to him and smiled. “You’re hard again.”

“I am,” he breathed.

She took hold of him, still slick with oil, and began to stroke him, taking John back in her mouth, working both of them at the same tempo. Sherlock’s brain shorted out and all higher functions went offline.

John looked down at them, then flopped his head back on the pillow with a groan. “You greedy thing,” he sighed. “You perfect, greedy thing.” He thrust, shallowly, into Mary’s mouth. “You like having two cocks to play with, don’t you?”

Mary pulled her mouth off her husband with a wet pop. “I love it. And I love both of you.” She let go, climbed out of the vee of John’s legs and grinned at Sherlock, filthy and lewd and beautiful. “Your turn, gorgeous man. I’ve been dying to see this.”

Sherlock placed himself between John’s legs, taking John in hand, licking the length of him, tasting a ghost of Mary still on the silky flesh, then took him in his mouth, deeply, trying to relax his throat like Mary had said. John exhaled sharply. Sherlock bobbed his head up and down again, learning, experiencing, finding he loved the feel of John’s cock in his mouth more than he had ever remotely believed possible. 

John groaned as the pleasure built in him, and he began to babble. “Jesus fuck God, that feels amazing,” John groaned. ‘Your mouth, Sherlock, your mouth, God, yes, please.” His hands found Sherlock’ s hair and grasped gently, not pulling but guiding, helping set the rhythm. Sherlock’s cock was hard and ready again, unbelievably, and Mary reached under him and took him in her hand.

“Can you come again?” She whispered, and he nodded. She stroked him in time to his movements on John, the hands of someone who loved him touching him, as his his sore abused lips stretched around the cock of someone who loved him.

John’s hands tightened in his hair. “I’m about to--” he gasped, and Sherlock didn’t let go, and John was coming, making noises Sherlock had never heard before. A flood of bitter salt sea filled his mouth, and he swallowed and swallowed and John convulsed under him, almost sobbing with release. Sherlock slowed and gentled, releasing John from his mouth as he stilled and sighed.

“You’re perfect,” John whispered, his fingers carding gently through Sherlock’s hair. “Let us keep you forever, please, you’re so perfect.”

Sherlock pressed his cheek into John’s heaving belly, fucking Mary’s fist underneath him. His body ratcheted tighter and tighter, a drawn bowstring thrumming for release, the pressure in him so great it was almost painful. 

“Let it go, now,” Mary whispered, and something broke inside him and he whimpered once and came, his orgasm crashing over him like a wave, pulling him under into the depths and dashing him against the rocks, breaking him into pieces, and as it receded, he found himself on the shore, whole again, but remade into something raw and precious and new.

Gentle hands cleaned him with a cool cloth, soft lips kissed his cheek, and he slept, the blank dreamless sleep of the innocent and the dead.

***

Sherlock woke a few hours later, briefly disoriented by the unfamiliar bed and tangle of limbs that did not belong to him. A moment of blankness, then his brain came back online, memories of earlier rushing back to him.

Loved. Well and thoroughly loved.

He wanted to luxuriate in the moment, with these warm bodies surrounding him, contemplating the vista of the uncharted world that stretched out at his feet.

Unfortunately, now that his brain was online, sleep had fled to parts unknown. And he had to piss rather badly. Also, John was snoring. 

He carefully unwound himself from his-- _partners?--spouses?_ \--his Johnandmary and stood, feeling the delicious soreness and unwashed stickiness of the thoroughly shagged. He found his pyjama bottoms in a tangle on the floor, discovered his silk dressing gown had been underneath the three of them the entire time and almost certainly ruined, and padded downstairs on silent feet.

He used the toilet, then considered a shower, deciding, quite illogically and unhygienically, that he wanted to keep the evidence of his body awhile longer.

He looked at himself in the mirror. His eyes were still a bit hazy, lips swollen and pink, hair a tangled mushroom cloud. A purpling love bite bloomed at the base of his neck.

 _Thirty-eight years old and I have my first hickey_ , he thought, irrational laughter blooming in his chest. _I am ridiculous. The universe is ridiculous. Logic and reason are ridiculous._

He wandered into the kitchen, rather hoping the tea fairies had left him a nice cuppa. Disappointed but not surprised by their failure to appear, he drifted into the sitting room instead.

_I am under the influence of near-lethal levels of oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine._

If he could keep this, he would never touch cocaine again.

_If I can keep this. Can I keep this?_

He looked out the window, at the streetlights washing Baker Street in an amber glow. London still pulsed around him, the heartbeat of the city he loved, pounding as ever with life and activity and passion and crime and death. 

Sherlock knew he was changed, irrevocably.

Yet London remained the same.

A queer melancholy settling over him, he picked up his violin, setting it under his chin. He tried a few notes. Not quite right. He closed his eyes, searched. _Melodie from Orpheus and Eurydice_. Music poured from his fingertips. 

He sensed the footsteps rather than heard them.

_Orpheus played to soften the hearts of Hades and Persephone, to plead his case. To plead for his love in the face of the gods. In the face of death._

The final notes floated into the stillness and disappeared.

He lowered the violin. Pushed the curtain aside, gazed out at the empty street, to the suspended animation of a city waiting to begin anew with the dawn.

His emotions receded into the background, and logic showed him the truths he could never forget.

“I am a man who collects enemies the way grandmothers collect teaspoons,” he said. “Moriarty is dead, but evil is a part of nature, and nature abhors a vacuum, doesn’t it? I don’t know where the next threat will come from, but I know that it will come. It is as certain as morning will follow this night.”

He dropped the curtain.

“I am so very different than I was, and that change is permanent. I can never go back. Would I? If it kept you safe? Perhaps I would, for that. But no matter, for that bridge is burnt now, that die is cast. 

“I am not the man I once was. I am now, so very improbably, a person who loves. Being loved by me, though, brings a terrible, terrible risk.

“My heart has changed, but the landscape of my existence in unforgiving. The threat will come. Not today, not tomorrow, but someday evil will be laid at our doorstep. And all I can do is promise to rise to that challenge. I may not be able to keep what I love safe. But I swear to you this: I will protect you all, or I will die trying.”

He gazed out the window, wishing he could see into the heart of London, see what awaited them there.

Dawn arrived on Baker Street. One by one, the streetlights extinguished.

Warm arms wrapped around his bare waist. Lips brushed his shoulder. Soft breath ghosted against his neck.

“Come back to bed, Sherlock,” John said.

And he did.

 

-Fin-


End file.
